


The Unintended

by asmodeusyne



Series: An Unconsecrated Society [1]
Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula - BBC, Dracula - Netflix
Genre: F/M, claes bang - Freeform, dracula 2020 - Freeform, dracula bbc, dracula netflix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:01:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22129900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asmodeusyne/pseuds/asmodeusyne
Summary: After the events of the The Dark Compass. Vlad Dracula and Zoe Van Helsing somehow manage to survive their exchange, only to find later that they are linked by irresistible fate. Zoe, given a second chance to live her mortal life, works with her friends to advance her research, while exploring a disturbing, deepening sexual connection with Dracula.
Relationships: Dracula/Zoe Van Helsing
Series: An Unconsecrated Society [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602802
Comments: 72
Kudos: 349





	1. Sunset Tower

**Author's Note:**

> Officially finished, but definitely not the last you'll hear of these characters. Dracula is (going over twenty years back to a terrible one-season kid's show) my very, very first fandom. I love the book and I tried to thread as much of it as possible into this story, but there's still a fair amount to play with. 
> 
> Per usual disclaimers, none of these characters belong to me (well, technically I can claim Vladdy if I want to, but who really needs that much ass pain in their lives) and I appreciate Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat for putting a super squishy open-ended finale at the end of this series so that freaks like me get the chance to abuse the canon in advance. I am in hopes of a Series 2. Claes Bang's Dracula is a sassy bitch, and that is my favourite kind of bitch. 
> 
> THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO READ AND COMMENTED. It was a wild ride and I turned it out in record time, but it needed to be written, and I appreciate everyone who came for the porn and stayed for the plot. I've already got a bit more sketched out, so keep your eyes out. A certain English gentleman is owed a reckoning.

Zoe felt the pain, knew intellectually it was pain, the tearing burning stinging sensation of a wound being ripped open in her skin. But it was so many thousands of miles away from her that it felt, as his lips felt, soft on her throat. His tongue warm and wet as it lapped, his breath warm as it issued from his nostrils. 

Then, in that realization, she felt the rest of him - the hardness of his body, the angles, the roughness of male hair. The shifting muscle under her fingers. The thick hardness of his cock inside her. The very human weight of him. 

“It’s been a long time since I’ve done this,” he said, his voice rumbling through him, full of uncertainty, but also that flicker of amusement that she had come to know so well in her lives. No end to this strange world. 

His eyes were dark brown, intense but not unearthly. His smile showed human teeth, and for all of his vanity it amused her, the way he enjoyed her looking. 

It was late afternoon in the old tower, the light gilding the stones of this strange, ancient nowhere place. He had pointed out when they had paused long enough to question whether this was an end or beginning, that they might as well enjoy it. And while they did, the light remained just as it was, golden, dusty, belonging to a sun that did not move. Their world had stopped. 

She gripped the back of the headboard as he fucked her, the violence of his stroke making the old legs of the bed skid against the stone floor. She fit so easily into his powerful hands, as he lifted her arching, writhing body, sealing his mouth over one breast.

_Come, my boy. Suckle._

He held her to him as he made her come, using the heel of his hand against her clit, encouraging her as he whispered into her ear, first in English, then in Romanian, then in some older, darker language. 

It had been glorious, the best orgasm she’d ever experienced, if she didn’t count the one he’d given her ten minutes before, or the one she would experience ten minutes later. But he was satisfied of his work, stroking her body as she twitched. She could feel the pressure of his teeth, but when she looked, no marks remained on her body. 

He rose from the bed, and went to sit on the broad windowsill, looking out into the misty coastline of their otherworld. She sat up in bed, pushed her hair back and looked him over. A man of fifty, vital, physically powerful, with a slavic mobile face that seemed to contain multitudes, and yet remained pensive as he looked into the golden blush. 

She felt a sudden hiss against the back of her neck as a memory replaced her image, and she saw him again, naked, coated in a patina of blood and slime, a snarl full of teeth as jagged and razor edged as a shark’s. The memory ranged before her eyes, and she heard the sounds of frightened female voices behind her, of rustling habits. His smile. She shook her head to try and clear the vision. When she opened her eyes, he was as he had been, slouched into the window, one arm supporting him against the stone wall. He was, she noticed, still hard, the knuckles of his other hand moving idly against the shaft, but his eyes were distracted. 

“Dracula,” she said softly. 

“My name is Vlad,” he said, first not looking at her, then finally meeting her eyes. “Call me Vlad.”

“I’m just used to it,” she said.

A thin smile played around his mouth as he returned to her. “If you met a Knight of the Garter, would you then call his son, the Little Garter?”

She smiled, blushed, and shook her head. 

“So too, Dracula,” he said and now there was a trace of his bitter humour there. “Little Dragon. The Dragon’s son. It sounds very impressive when you posh it up with modern titles. But believe me, Zoe, it was a fucking burden.”

She grinned at him, his Anglo mannerisms, how perfectly he replicated them. 

“What were you going to say?” he asked, stroking her hair back from her face. 

She blinked, unsure. Then, as she felt him press at her side, felt him hard against her thigh, she recalled. 

“You still haven’t…”

He shook his head, and licked his lips. “No.”

“Why not?”

“If I do, I’m afraid that...whatever is or isn’t happening outside this will then...happen.”

She stared at him. “You mean we’re not dead?”

He sighed, and his eyes were glossy as he stared down at her, fingers still moving affectionately over her neck and throat. “No.”

“But you said.” she frowned. “I’ve got pancreatic cancer. You’ve drained my blood.”

“Yes,” he said, now frowning. “And normally, that ought to be enough.”

Now alarmed, she reached for him, digging her fingernails into his skin. “What do you mean, normally?”

“We have friends,” he said with irritation, and now she thought she could see a trace of his fanged teeth as he pronounced the fricative word “friends” as though it was a contemptible estate. 

“Jack,” she realized. 

“And my solicitor,” Vlad, for now she thought of him, muttered. “I should’ve put him in a box first thing.”

“So that’s why you can’t come?” Zoe said, and then suddenly she wanted to start laughing hysterically. 

“Well, darling, I could, but it would break my focus,” he purred. “Once that happens, we go back to wherever...whatever we are.”

“Dead,” she confirmed. “Undead?”

He shrugged helplessly. 

“You can’t just fuck me forever, Vlad,” she scolded. 

“I can try,” he growled, pulling her on top of him, down on to his cock. Zoe cried out as he went deep. His hands rode over her hips as she rolled them, finding a deep joy in the physicality of sex that she thought she’d lost forever to her infirmity. 

She had lovers in her life, but it had never been more effortless than it was now. She had tracked this man through history, but had never actually known what she was really going to do with him once she’d caught him. Even in her laboratory, she hadn’t planned an outcome. She hadn’t planned to see it through. But a small part of her wondered....

Unable to stand it, Vlad arched up, slid his arms around her waist and fucked her sitting up so that he could kiss her. 

“Don’t stop,” she told him when he slackened off the pace. “Don’t.”

“Zoe. What if --”

“I’m not afraid,” she told him.

“This doesn’t change anything, does it?” he murmured, and the sadness in his voice was an infinite black sinkhole so deep it echoed through her. 

“ _I’m not afraid_ ,” she repeated.

He rolled her on to her back, pushed her legs apart and drove home, going so deep inside of her that it made her twist inside. When his fingers slid into hers, she saw that they were clawed. When he cried out, brows furrowed, his fanged teeth were fully visible. Locked in a mortal man’s pleasure, he didn’t seem to notice the beast now reclaiming its host. 

“Agatha,” he breathed. Then, “Zoe.”

She was ready when his teeth tore into her throat. She felt him shudder as the orgasm throbbed out of him, even as he suckled, tongue lapping, craving the taste of her. He kissed the blood flowing from the wound, and the pain should have been hideous, but she felt as light as air, and welcomed the enfolding silence.


	2. Bonding Theory

“Dr. Van Helsing.”

_Zoe. Zoe, Zoe, stay with me. Zoe._

_Please stay back, sir, she’s lost a lot of blood._

_I know, she’s AB negative with ….I’m Type O, I can--_

_Sir, there’s no time. We can only transfuse with tested blood --_

_I’m a doctor, a junior doctor, I just got my shots...look, here’s my donor card. One week ago. Will that do?_

_Dr. Seward, I’m sorry._

_Please. There’s no time._

“Dr. Van Helsing?”

“Where am I?” Zoe blinked. She felt dizzy, but as the nurse elevated her hospital bed, the world around her started to come into focus. Daylight. Featureless hospital room. Flowers. Her mobile phone charging on the table next to her.

“St. Mary’s Hospital in Whitby.” the nurse said with a tight smile. “The Harker Foundation had you flown here especially.”

Zoe thanked her, and accepted the water and porridge she offered, and found that she was able to stomach a few bites. Enough to confirm her thesis, that wasn’t dead, or undead, or, as far as she could tell...dying at all. She raised her hand to the bandage on her neck, and felt the sharp serration of teeth. Then she felt hands, felt his mouth, felt his cock. The memory was in her skin. 

She picked up her phone and checked her texts. She found Jack’s last message to her - a simple, I’ll come visit in a couple of hours - and went to reply.

“Oh, thank god,” said Jack from the doorway, making her jump. He shed his bouquet of flowers awkwardly into the sink and hurried to her side. “How are you feeling?”

“You look pale,” she told him, frowning. “Jack.”

“Yeah,” he said, showing her the bandage at the crook of the elbow.

“What happened to…” she didn’t know why she was lowering her voice, but she couldn’t bear to say the name.

“We can’t find him,” Jack said in an undertone. “No body. No remains. Either he walked out, or someone took him.”

“A friend,” Zoe muttered. 

“There’s something else,’ Jack said, and this time he brightened. “Something wonderful.”

She looked at him with a blank smile, waiting for him to tell her. 

“The cancer is gone,” he said softly. 

She stared at him. She had known it, somehow, without knowing it, but hearing him say it suddenly opened a door to a future that was weirder and more unexpected than even the normal lifetime she wasn’t expected to have. 

“It’s true,” he confirmed, pulling an ipad out of his bag. “It’s not really my area, but I thought if you had a look at these samples you could…”

She took the ipad and scrolled through the file information. “Your guess was close. When he drank my blood he took the mutated cells out of my body.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“I…” she paused, suddenly unwilling to impart this information. “I drank the sample we took from him. I wanted to gain insight. I didn’t think…”

He blinked at her. Then straightened, and looked down at the ipad. “The cancer genes bonded to the vampire blood you drank, and he consumed them when he fed from you.” 

“I can only assume so,” Zoe said as she flicked through the data. As she did so, she realized that she really was hungry. For real food, not for hospital food. “Let’s go for walk.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it?”

“I think so,” she said as she raised herself up on her palms. She felt better than just alive. She felt strong. 

“He must be dead,” Jack said hopefully, as he helped her to the dressing room to change out of her gown. “The cancer genes bond to vampire blood, so he’s completely infected with it.”

“He’s not,” she said as she pulled on her freshly laundered clothes. 

“How do you know?”

She felt sun-warmed hands on her skin, a smile against her throat. 

“I just do,” she said as she stepped out from behind the curtain. 


	3. The Ferryman's Fee

It was a mystery for the ages. Holyhead to Dublin ferry goes missing with all aboard, into a fog that was remembered by all who witnessed it, but appeared on no satellite image, or in any photographs that were taken from either coastal authority. 

Vlad Dracula, third of his name, one time warlord, prince, middling boyar, now lay on the nubby carpet of a Euro-Ferry, still, in spite of the vast swath of human life he had consumed, in astonishing pain. He’d felt pain in his lifetime, had blades set to his flesh, had fought for his life on more than one occasion, but this was something so physical that he thought it must have a metaphysical origin.

How very, very inconvenient, he thought, that his plan hadn’t worked, because he would like very much to be dead right now.

One of the passengers, an old lady who had not quite finished her own dying, stared at him from under the row of seats. 

“I know,” he told her. “I wanted to. I was ready. I thought she was right.”

The old lady, her neck ringed in gore, just gaped at him. 

“Not about the shame,” he said, scoffing a little. “That was just nonsense. I’ve never run from a fight in my life. I don’t know all of the rules, but you know what I do know...what I think I understand now…”

“Please,” the woman whimpered, as much as her torn throat allowed her.

Dracula rolled on to his side, and looked into her crumpled face, not seeing it at all. “I think that there’s an insight I’ve been missing all of this time. You see, when I was made, it wasn’t by accident at all. She loved me. Or said she did, anyway, she was mad as a top. The Turks used one of my own pikes to shish kebab her. Is that right? Shish kebab?”

“Yes, master,” Renfield agreed helpfully. He’d been watching from one of nearby seats, like a parishioner at some unholy sermon. His eminently ordinary face was bloodied from his own feasting, and while he was not yet a vampire and not yet a revenant, he seemed to be getting something out of the exercise.

Slowly, Vlad Dracula lifted himself off the bloody carpet, feeling some of the pain inside him ease slightly. Every night, it was improving, though it had been absolutely agonizing at first. Renfield had been required to hand feed him, he’d been so paralyzed. 

“Anyway,” Vlad continued, crouching down next to the dying woman. “My point was, she told me that she loved me. And she meant it. She liked to watch me fight. I was good, and back then then, that really opened a lot of doors for you in the dating market.”

“Please,” she begged. 

“She loved me,” he said, now his voice softening in his own wonder. “Do you know, I’ve always looked for something special in those...the ones with more than just novelty value. Have you ever felt like that about anyone?”

He waited for her to answer, but she was dead, the last of her life blood now stagnant under her head. Vlad shrugged, straightened and looked around. The blood of three hundred and thirty two passengers had almost washed him clean. Catching them had been slow going at first, even with Renfield’s eager assistance. 

It still was not enough. The ache in his chest had changed, but it had not abated. He knew it would not kill him. He wasn’t sure what else would, apart from the traditional. He’d tried day walking, just for an instant, but it was useless. Without Zoe, Agatha, whoever she was, whatever she was, at hand, he could not do it. She put her faith in him, and for an instant he had been perfectly invincible.

He licked the corners of his mouth like a cat, and could taste the hundreds of lives once belonging to the corpses around him. A few of them would rise, but none of them would rise well. Not like Jonathan Harker. Not like Lucy Westenra would have, if she’d listened to him, poor poppet. Now, Zoe. Mortal, but tainted. How bitter her blood had tasted, at first. Then, glorious. Now, where was she? Who was she? Who was he, even?

_I’ll know where to find you when you’re ready._


	4. Always a Bridesmaid

_What was that you said about lies you tell yourself? They become habit forming._

_I don’t know what you’re talking about._

_The one about being her great great great grand niece, whatever._

_That wasn’t a lie._

_Yes, it is. Or it was. I think Agatha even believed it, after a while. But I can still taste the sadness in her blood. She didn’t take the cloth a virgin, that one._

_Just because I look like her -_

_You don’t just look like her, my darling. You are an immortal vision, as unchanged as I am. Both of us trapped in amber._

_You’re romanticizing, Vlad. You let your whimsy get the better of you to such an extreme degree._

_Don’t be so hard on me. After half a millennium, I have to work very hard to keep myself entertained._

Zoe woke with the dawn, alone, in her Whitby flat. The memory, the echo, whatever it was, seemed to cling to her. She took a long shower, scrubbing and washing and re-washing her hair, unable get the sticky feeling of blood off of her skin. She felt as though she had pulled clumps out of her hair, but when she looked in the bathroom mirror, she saw no signs. Only the mark on her throat, a very faint tracing of jagged indentations, made any visible change in her. It was not a prominent wound. He’d been gentle. The flesh was cut, but not torn. It worried her, because she did not yet know what it meant for her mortality.

Standing naked before her sink pedestal, she looked down at her fingernails, but they were firmly attached to her fingertips. She padded out into her bedroom and pulled back her closet door to stand before her full length mirror.

A slender woman, 45, of slightly above average height. Light brown hair, long limbs, and a body that could have done with some fattening. She did not like the visibility of her rib cage, nor the protruding bones of her hips. Her abdominal muscles were visible without the concealing layer of fat, and her mound too seemed too tightly molded, even under the soft down of slightly ginger pubic hair. 

She felt, now that she thought about it, ravenously hungry. She put her wet hair into a bun, rummaged around for some now-slightly-loose clothes. A pair of jeans and a plaid shirt gave her the armor she needed to go out and face breakfast. 

Dr. Veronica Bloxham was waiting for her at the Sooty Tern Cafe, a local spot that always had seats for the residents. The younger woman looked tired, and the wound where her thumb had been was neatly stitched up, and on its way to healing. 

She brightened when Zoe arrived, and embraced her warmly. Their eyes met, and they both examined each other for a moment, searching for signs of trauma. 

“Nothing. I’m clean,” Bloxham confirmed, and Zoe realized her friend's anxiety was not for herself. _What about you?_

“You order yet?” Zoe asked as she sat down, dodging the unspoken question. She flagged down the solitary waiter and ordered a large breakfast. 

“Peckish, are we?” Bloxham said with a grin, turning her coffee cup in her hand. 

“I feel like I haven’t had a proper meal since before I got sick,” Zoe confessed. “God, you forget how good that feeling is.”

“It’s more than that,” Bloxham said with a frown. “There’s something about you.” 

“Like what?” Zoe said airily as she accepted coffee and cutlery. She took a long sip. “Mmm, that’s good.”

“I don’t know,” Bloxham shrugged, looking down at the black stitches. “Jack told me a bit of it, about the DNA bonding, but I was hoping you’d fill in the rest.”

They went quiet as their food arrived. Zoe worked busily on her steak and eggs for a moment, then finally gave her full attention to her colleague. 

“I can’t speak to details,” she lied. “He bit me. We both believed it would kill him.”

“How can you know he believed that?” Bloxham said in an undertone. 

“I suppose I can’t,” Zoe said as she mopped up her plate with a piece of toast. “But I’m not dead. I’m not dying. I’m not, as far as I can tell, disintegrating. Lots to be grateful for, really.”

Bloxham looked up from a contemplation of her missing digit. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

Zoe felt a frisson of annoyance, but then her shoulders relaxed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect to be alive this time tomorrow. I feel a little…”

“Giddy?”

Zoe nodded. “In a word.”

“Not afraid?”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of Dracula.”

Zoe blinked. She sat back, and frowned, surprised at how the offensive the thought was, even though it was perfectly rational. 

“I was never afraid of him, Ronnie,” she said slowly. “Respectful, I should say. Like I’m respectful of venomous animals, or poisonous plants.”

“Those things don’t have egos,” Bloxham pointed out. “This thing does. He likes mind games, likes playing with flesh and blood to make monsters. I’m just concerned...I am worried that he’s gotten into your head.”

“Trust me,” Zoe said, taking Bloxham’s unblemished hand. “This doesn’t change anything.”

\--

Dr. John Seward wanted to give the appearance of comfort as he sat in his arm chair, and tried not to look away from his patient. Fred Ian Keller did not, once exhumed, clean up well. Manacled hand and foot to his chair, he looked like a week old corpse that had been buried in a hospital gown.

The gown had been an afterthought, once the rotted clothes had been taken away. Fred, whose sense of self seemed to increase as a result of the care shown to him, now stared back at Seward with one good eye, and one milky one. His face, except for a few patches, was mostly intact, and the once-ginger hair that clung to his skull.

When he smiled, his rotted teeth were visible through holes in the side of his face. He didn't seem troubled by the restraints.

“Fred, do you know what happened to you?”

Fred shrugged. “I had a drop in, maybe a couple. All I remember is was this lady, delicate little thing, she took a fancy to me late in the evening. Bit too smart for the locale if I say so myself, but then I was an ‘ansome devil once.”

Jack wanted to laugh, but he was afraid he might gag, so he forced the feeling down. “Did she give you her name?”

“Called herself Katerina,” he said. “Little thing, like, had a strange accent. But god, she had a grip on me before I knew it. Said she’d had her eye on me ever since she saw me putting up the mews. Said something funny, like.”

“Funny, how?”

“She said she was looking for a bride. Someone to...”

Fred frowned, his mottled brow coming together. Then, he straightened, and his spine creaked as he recalled the memory. 

“Go on,” Jack urged, pen poised though he hadn’t written a word. 

“Said I was to carry on her legacy after she was gone. Bring me to an end, Freddy, I am a ghost and I wish to be freed. Then she…”

He held up a hand to his throat, though there wasn’t that much flesh there. Jack knew exactly what he meant. This man, not quite a revenant, not quite a vampire, swallowed in a way that pulled at the half rotted muscles.

“She drank your blood,” Jack prompted.

“Aye,” Fred nodded. “Then she asked me to help her die. I didn’t want to, but she told me she wanted peace. So I obeyed her, and I did it with an old piece of board that I sharpened with my pen knife. They found us like that before dawn, and hanged me the week after.”

“That must have been terrifying for you,” Jack said gently. 

“Too right,” Fred agreed. “I went pure mad. All I wanted was to die, but I knew I deserved to be punished for what I done. So I stayed in me box and prayed for forgiveness.”

“We don’t believe you deserved that,” Jack said kindly. “We would like to study you, if you consent.”

“Is that like vivisection?” Fred said with a small grin. “I ain’t got much left to vivisect, Dr. Seward.”

“No,” Jack said. “We’d take blood and tissue samples from you, and then try and keep you comfortable during that process.”

“And after?”

“After would be up to you. If you feel you do not want to continue this life…”

Fred touched his mummified chest. “Look at me, doctor. Would you want to live like this?”

\--

“There is no qualitative difference in the blood samples,” Jack dictated to his iPad, pacing his small office. “Vampiric blood seems to differ only in the sense that it contains the contagion, while revenant blood is mostly exsanguinated and beyond measuring. In the category of “bride” it seems that the choosing is not so much a matter of random exposure, but a consideration of the state of mortal flesh at the time it is transformed to undead flesh.”

He paused, and thought of Lucy. His Lucy, so utterly ravaged by the fate forced on her by Count Dracula. Zoe had described to him Dracula’s healing ability, or rather his ability to return to his undead state. Had that ability bypassed Lucy? Had the transformation completed itself too late, so that her undead state would forever be the melted, horrifying monstrosity that had begged him for surcease?

Jack massaged his temples. He wanted to ask Zoe for help, but he knew that it was not a matter he could broach lightly with her. Her return to the Harker Foundation was still pending.

“Siri, resume dictation,” Jack called, and waited for the little electronic burble. “Note, therefore, that the only major variable in the development of a vampire as the result of a bite, or blood exposure, is the degree of care given to that new, potential vampire’s development.”

In other words, he thought, the compassion and affection shown to the dying body of the bride. Was it possible Dracula did not know this? That his capricious desire for companionship had failed him time and time again because he simply did not know how to care for the his victim's corporeal condition? Had he not met the vampire, Jack would have found it slightly incredible given the span of years he’d had to experiment, but he’d seen what he’d done to Lucy. What he, Dracula, considered affection. 

“Idiot,” Jack said out loud. Then, “Siri, delete that.”


	5. Appetites

Vlad lay back on his bed, laptop propped on his stomach, one hand moving over the keys. He’d hired a very good hacker to obtain all of Zoe Van Helsing’s personal information and passwords, and had spent the better part of an hour scrolling through her various accounts.

Most of it was meaningless, distant family, deceased parents, a couple of old lovers. University men of the type that suggested early indiscretions. When he came to her DNA profile, something required of her by the Hawker Foundation, he discovered they’d done a heritage profile as well. No timestamps. She’d never logged into it. 

It was general information, placing her ancestry in Holland and Britain, but it made him wonder. As he flicked over to the ancestry report, he felt satisfaction in the correctness of his surmise. Where Agatha’s sibling ought to be there was a silhouette with a question mark. 

He closed the laptop, and yawned, though it was utter affect. He was not tired. He was hardly even hungry, which he found more than passing odd. 

The bedroom here at Carfax was in fact the wine cellar. The monks had preferred a low and oppressive style, which he found rather charming. Above, there was more renovation to be done, but here was perfect. Perfect, except that he no longer slept, and he missed it. That had been the effect of losing his native soil. He could not rest at all. 

It had not, so far as he could tell, harmed him. He’d stalked the daytime shadows, but he found that he missed the silence. Sometimes he closed his eyes, and tried to leave his body behind. He’d even sent Renfield off to close the penthouse, just to get his frittering little heartbeat out of earshot. 

Vlad did not sleep. He wanted her, wanted her in the way a man wants a woman, which again was not something he was at all accustomed to. He could have sexual intercourse, and on occasion he used it to add savour his blood sport, but it was not a dominating drive as it was for living male mammals.

And her. Zoe. Perfectly ordinary English woman, even a little stringy for his taste, but he knew his assessment was as vapid as any vain young man’s. As unassuming as she was, she contained multitudes, and in his arms, absolutely ravenous. She was a woman who kept her passions on very short reins indeed, but once freed, she had a wonderful carnality, self aware and experienced.

Vlad smiled to himself. He’d never had her, not in this reality. He closed his eyes, pulled open his plush dressing gown and reached for his hardening cock. Vaguely, he wondered what mechanism of supernatural evolution allowed him this virility after nearly five hundred and fifty years. He wondered if Zoe might ever explain it to him, then imagined her whispering in his ear, telling him the ways in which he was impossible, her sure hand working him while he panted like a mortal, too breathless to tell her he adored her, that he would be her slave, her experiment for all time as long as she did not stop doing this to him.

When he came, he was not surprised to find the fluid issuing from him was not what came out of mortal men. It resembled clear plasma, not any more or less offensive than normal semen, and it washed easily away from his hand.

Suddenly he was hungry, but not just for anyone. 

\-- 

“Who is this?” Zoe asked, shouldering her phone to her ear as she loaded her laundry into the clothes washer. 

“You’ll never guess,” purred the low, dark voice. 

“Dracula,” she said, unsurprised. 

“Vlad. We’re friends now.” 

“Is that what we are?” she said with amusement, flipping on the machine, then stepping away. 

“I want to see you,” he said, and she felt a little ripple up her spine at the earnest ache in his voice, and tried to remind herself that any wolf could whine. 

“I’m sure you can, any time that you want,” she said, only half paying attention as she looked out her kitchen window at the westering sun. 

“Not like that,” he murmured, a bit of a pout in his voice. “For dinner. Tonight.”

“I’ve been your dinner already.”

“I will not lay a fang on you. Scout’s honour.”

“Are you saying you ate a Boy Scout.”

“Two of them,” he confessed. “The buddy system notwithstanding.”

She was silent as she absorbed this. 

“I’m kidding, Zoe.”

She hesitated, then, from a distance, heard herself say. “Meet me on Church Street in an hour.”

It was a quick drive from her place. She’d bothered slightly about her appearance, feeling oddly insecure about being seen by him as a drab, sexless scientist. She had been dying, and now she was not dying, and she found that she no longer had to act as her own mourner. She didn’t even bother to conceal the mark on her throat. 

So she wore a black dress, lace sleeves, understated but flattering. She put her hair up, added some eyeliner. And she packed a stake in her sensible designer purse, with no special intention, but more to prove to herself that she didn’t need to choose between her fascination with him, or her ability to put an end to him. 

She was unsure on that second score. She decided that she, Zoe Van Helsing, last of her line, would honour her commitment to study this murderer the same way doctors the world over studied serial killers. As she drove, she told herself this. She told herself that acting as her own laboratory would keep the others safe. That the darkness was the price she had to pay for understanding. She parked her car, and left the stake on the floor of the back seat. 

He loitered by a bench, dressed in a simple blazer and slacks, coiffed and trim as ever, his slavic brows knit in an expression of introspection that made him look as though he was concerned about the bench, that it might do something unexpected. 

His eyes flicked to her as she approached him. He smiled, closed lipped, obscuring the fangs that, even when recessed, singled him out as an unmistakable predator. 

“You look well,” he said approvingly. 

“So do you,” she observed.

“It took time,” he said, no hint of modesty. “Time, and lives.”

She sighed. “You know I won’t permit you to continue this way.”

Now he did smile with his teeth, just a flash of fang. “Recent events suggest otherwise, my dear, but I do enjoy watching you try.”

She chose a nicer pub, the Rookwood, which overlooked the dark waters, and was noisy enough to give them privacy in their tall booth. Zoe ordered a pint and a salmon filet with fingerling potatoes and greens. Vlad watched her as she ate with gusto, showing no ladylike delicacy. He seemed fascinated, even slightly enthralled by the act.

“Hungry, are we?”

She nodded. “I haven’t eaten well for a long time.”

“Maybe you’ve been knocked up,” he suggested. “Eating for two.”

Her eyes flicked up to him, narrowed in annoyance. “Not unless I’ve been the victim of immaculate conception, no.”

Suddenly his head turned, whipping around, nostrils flaring. She followed his gaze, and noticed that the barman had cut his hand on a piece of cardboard. He swore, brought it to his mouth. She looked back at Vlad in alarm, but he seemed to be holding himself in check, though his eyes were locked on the tiny droplets clinging to the varnished surface of the old till. 

He licked his lips, but slowly, forced his attention back on her. She set down her fork and frowned at him. 

“Vlad.”

“I’m fine.”

“But --”

“I’m not...that hungry.”

He seemed astonished at his own words. She looked down at her plate, now mostly empty, a slow realization circling her mind. 

“Want to get out of here?” she said, suddenly ready to be out of the confines of this place. He nodded.

Ten minutes later, they were walking up Church Lane towards the tall, ruined abbey and its encompassing cemetery. Vlad followed the silhouette of the cathedral with his eyes, and she knew he was remembering the night he’d crawled out of the sea. She’d surprised him with her small army, so eager to claim her prize. Since before her birth, the Harker Foundation had only revenants to play with, and here, now, the real thing. One of the lost originals.

She’d done a multidiscipline study of medical law, european mythology, and taken a medical degree in what was officially hematology, but was in fact a mishmash of whatever branch of medicine she felt relevant or amusing at the time. School had never been enough for her. Her stake in the Harker Foundation meant she’d been on the board since the age of eighteen. Even before then, she’d found Agatha’s writings, and she knew that she wanted nothing more than to study this creature. To get as close as possible. To disdain her personal safety in order to understand. 

She told him this, as though he had not known it, but it felt good to admit to it all of the same. So much craziness, for the sake of her own morbid curiosity. So much death, when she could have finished him at any time with nothing more deadly than a chopstick. His words. She’d laughed. Then she’d frowned, aware that her moral centre was coming unhinged, that Ronnie had been right - Vlad Dracula was not a wild animal, but a being of ego, capable of understanding his actions. A sadist. A sensualist. 

“What is happening to us?” she asked him, once they were away from the thinning crowd. 

But he paused, reaching out to touch the ancient stone, to look up at its soaring, somber face. It was older than he was by a generation, and it seemed to please him. Then he remembered her. 

“You’re the scientist,” he said dryly. “You tell me.”

She shrugged. “You’ve had my blood. You have insight into my science.”

“All right,” he said. “We’ve consumed, if not exchanged each other’s blood. This, along with my feeding from you when your blood was tainted, has forged some kind of metaphysical connection.”

“Now your hunger is tempered, and mine has increased,” she observed. 

“I wouldn’t say tempered,” he said softly, and now she felt a chill run through her. 

It was dark behind this corner of the abbey, and there was no one nearby. His closeness was suddenly too close, and she felt heat rise in her face. 

“What about Scout’s honour?” she said quietly. 

“I told you I was kidding,” he said in that infuriatingly chastising tone.

“What if I say no?” she said, pushing her chin out like a defiant little girl.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked, gently lifting her chin with one of his claw tipped fingers. “There’s no risk of exposure.”

“You don’t think I can be made a vampire?”

“That I don’t know,” he admitted. “Death is part of the process, and you haven’t died.”

“I’d prefer not to,” she said, taking a step back from him. 

“I respect that,” he said as took a step closer, recovering the distance, then shortening it again. “But you want this, Zoe. You want me. I can smell it. I can taste it.”

Then his mouth was on hers, tongue probing, the sudden hardness of old stone on her back as he moved her with his body. Then she was kissing him, devouring him, heedless of his sharp teeth, wanting to drown in him. Lover. Adversary. Strange bedfellow. 

_I want to taste you._

He broke the kiss, pushing back her hair, stroking her throat with his fingers, then kissing it, tongue seeking out the vein. Then, very gently, he used his fanged teeth to penetrate her skin, pricking it just so, sucking to bring the blood to the surface. She felt frozen, drunk, intoxicated as he sucked slowly, with infinitesimal care. From the outside, it would look like nothing more than a man and woman a little beyond their prime embracing with the vitality of youthful lovers. 

His teeth withdrawn, he subsided into kisses, sipping away the last drops of the vintage that welled from the needle marks in her skin. So small they’d be gone by morning, if she was fated to see it. She could tell he wanted to pull her into the dream, to resume their daylight conversation, but his restraint also spoke of another motive.

 _Take me home with you._

He’d driven, finding the way easily. There was something very graceful in the way he drove, guiding the wheel of her old BMW with one finger, enjoying the thrum of the machine. She watched him pensively from her corner in the passenger seat, trying to place him and his odd sense of kinship. Trying to put the bloody mask on him, to see the thing that lived inside his human skin, alongside whatever was or had been Vlad Dracula. Trying to picture him as a young man, wondering if his cruelty was inborn, or whether he was a product of his time, a creation of a sober God.

Frightening thought, but then Agatha’s journals had always affirmed this - here too was one of God’s creatures. There, Zoe knew, they differed. To her mind, if God was to be reckoned into this comedy, then He was a capricious, hateful engine of the void. Then she looked again at her companion, and considered that he might be the proof. 

He smiled at her, sensing her perplexity, as he turned into the driveway of her little apartment block. Her flat was accessed by an outside stair, and when she unlocked the door and stepped in, he followed her without hesitation. 

“I didn’t invite you in,” she observed, a point of fact as she shut the door behind him.

“Yes, you did,” he said, slipping off his dinner jacket and laying it over the back of a chair. “You’ve been asking yourself not whether you’d go to bed with me, but when. How do you rationalize that, Zoe? I’m curious.”

She felt her jaw go tight as she moved instinctively towards her little kitchen, then gave into the impulse and put the kettle on. 

“I had some time to think about it,” he continued as he began to pluck open the buttons of his shirt. “I think your curiosity went into overdrive after you found out you were dying.”

“Hardly surprising. I knew I had limited time,” she countered, dropping a teabag into a steaming cup of water. 

“Did you know that?” he countered back, but quietly. “Come now, Zoe. Any mortal would be tempted. A mortal with a terminal illness...don’t tell me that part of you didn’t want to test it.”

She met his eyes, and felt a sudden rush of shame bring heat to her face. She was ashamed of the lie she’d told herself. Ashamed now that her moment of strength, her readiness to end, was now so frightening to her that her hands shook as she sipped her tea, trying to use the mug to act as a shield between herself and his words. 

“You were talking about yourself,” he said, taking the mug from her, pausing to feel the heat in his hands before setting it aside. “Your own shame. You hit on something for me, I won’t lie about that. But not because I failed to live up to the honour of my line during my lifetime.”

“You are a thief,” she said, feeling a little poisoned righteousness coming to her aid. “You were a warrior, and now you play games.”

“That’s what war is, my darling.”

When he took her face in his hands, she didn’t resist. When he kissed her, she tasted her own blood, tasted the wicked edges of his teeth, but she didn’t care. She was immortal. She had cheated death, and cheated undeath as well, and nothing could touch her.

She tore open the remaining buttons of his shirt, letting her hands roam over his body, his coarse pelt, and underneath the wiry hard body of a fighter. He slid the zipper of her dress down, and his hands were cool on the lean muscle of her back. Her exploration of his body continued as he pulled her back to her bedroom, down on to her unmade bed, her hands divesting him of his trousers. 

Her cock was thick in her hand, over average by a few inches. It was, like the rest of him, pale, but there was a red flush at the tip, and the dark purple veins were visible through the skin. The texture of the skin, delicate, velvety, that familiar to her from all of her experience of men. 

“Gently,” he grinned, mocking the word. “It’s been so long. I’m almost new.”

She grinned at him, then bent down and kissed the head of his cock, something she could tell wholly surprised him. It had been a long time for her, too, but she remembered how to do this, remembered that it gave her as much joy to perform this act as it had been for her partner. She’d had sexual power as an ambitious young woman, and now she had experience, which served her appetite just as well.

He arched, gasping as she took him into her mouth, then into her throat. She felt herself growing wetter, though she’d been wet since the abbey, and she applied a helping of saliva to assist her hand as she jerked him slowly, tonguing his urethra, kissing, licking his balls. 

“ _Iisus Hristo_ s” he gasped, his dyed-in-the-wool English abandoning him completely. “ _Draga, nu te opri…_ ”

But she did stop. She rose from her task, mouth red and swollen, eyes now on her victim. He could only watch her helplessly as she shimmied out of the dress, as she straddled him. His brow furrowed and lips parted, clawed hands now coming to rest on her hips. He gasped sharply as she took him into her, sinking down on to his cock, feeling herself adjust to his size. 

“Yes, take me,” he groaned as she began to roll her hips, to grind against him, finding an angle and a rhythm that suited her. 

His hand roamed her body, finding her slight breasts, palming one erect nipple. He could only stare at her, and she understood that his experience was so limited to the medieval that her riding him from the superior position was a whore’s trick, the height of his bedroom deviancy. His royal wives did not do this, if they fucked him at all beyond the prescribed holy days. Now, he was ready to cede power to her, desperate for it. 

His impatience got the better of him. He pulled her down against him, kissing her deeply as his hand found the small of her back, the cool metal of his signet ring pressing slightly against her spine. He held her at the perfect angle for penetration, and then began to fuck her in earnest, his strokes tireless and measured, just the right speed, just the right impact, until she was soaking him with her orgasm, whimpering into his neck as she clung to him. 

He rolled her on to her back, pulling her to the edge of the bed where he could stand and watch her as he entered her again, feel her writhe under his hand. She laughed as the pleasure surged through her, as she surrendered her body to him, to the feeling of his cock going deep into her. No pain as he impacted her cervix, because she was so relaxed, so confident in her own joy. No shame, nothing hidden, none of that Victorian guilt, just pure unapologetic release.

He made her come again, warm, wet, delighting in the feel of her soaking his pubic hair. She arched, her eyes rolling back like one possessed, flushed pink from mouth to breasts. Then he couldn’t resist. He wanted her against his skin. He drew back, then pushed her legs apart with his knee, sliding back inside of her as she wrapped her arms around him. Then, before he could stop himself, he opened her throat again, just the merest prick. Just to taste her. Without warning, the instant her blood touched his tongue, he came inside her, shooting like a jet, aching in his belly and his balls as he released what felt like a century of orgasms inside of her.

She felt it refracting in her, felt the orgasm ride through her, a different sensation than the one before it, but one that left her feeling leaden and exhausted, her skin humming, her vision hazy. Sleep beckoned her and she did not resist, letting it take her down into its soothing darkness.


	6. Betrothal

Zoe woke in the late morning, expecting to be alone, half expecting to have dreamed the night’s events, except for the very physical ache in her body that betokened sexaul exertion. But she wasn’t alone. Vlad Dracula’s arms were like stone around her, his eyes closed, the pallor of his skin almost illuminated by the dim, curtained daylight. He looked dead, felt cool the way corpses did, and yet his expression was too self-satisfied to belong to the inanimate face of the dead. He looked, she thought, perfectly undead. And he smiled when she tried to wriggle out of his embrace. 

“Stay,” he said without opening his eyes. “It’s nicer here.”

“Some of us have needs,” she told him, giving his arm a shove. 

He lifted it reluctantly, and she padded across the room to her ensuite bathroom. After taking care of her human requirements, she turned on the shower, and paused to examine the marks in her throat. Barely more than hickey, below the delicate scar. Still, she didn’t plan on showing it off to anyone. 

He joined her in the shower, moving carefully to avoid the few bands of light that bled out from under her curtains. When she was done washing her hair, he remained back, fascinated by his own reflection in her mirror. 

“Who do you see?” she asked as she towelled her hair dry. 

“A very stupid young man,” he said with a smile. “Who thinks that nothing can kill him.”

“What did kill you?” she wondered. “There’s no record.”

Vlad cocked a brow at her. “It’s not good breakfast conversation. And besides, words don’t do it justice.”

“You mean you’d have to --”

“Taking you into a memory like that would require that I feed on you to a greater extent. It’s quite dangerous, as I’m sure you remember.”

She went to her fridge and extracted some eggs and a rasher of bacon. “I suppose I could try drinking your blood again. But I can’t truly read events, so much as…”

“Resonate with them,” he offered, hovering nearby in the shadow cast by her fridge. “You don’t absorb lives in the same way. And in that instance, you connected with one soul, your own kin.”

“There are other possibilities,” she considered as she fried her breakfast. “I do have access to them.”

“If you plan on putting me back in your fish tank again,” he warned. “I won’t last long. Your friends are not as committed to the mandate as you are.”

“And I’m fucking you,” she observed, flipping one egg and then the other into the bacon grease. 

At that moment, her front buzzer rang. The sound sizzled through her brain, jerking her awake. She blinked, utterly at odds with herself and her surroundings, a cold sweat pouring down her back. It was midday, and she was alone in her bed.

A knocking at her door, tentative. Jack, she thought, though how she knew she was unsure. Her phone was out of battery, which odd, since she normally plugged it in first thing whenever she got home. 

“Zoe?” came the muffled call through the door. Moving quickly, she rose and pulled on a dressing gown, picking up her phone just as she looked at herself in the mirror. There, next to the scar, the red angry mark of his more recent kiss. 

Her phone trilled as it restarted. She looked at, and saw a message timestamped from six hours before.

_Sweetest of dreams, Zoe. We must do this again some evening._

After it, a string of text messages from Jack and Bloxham both, in varying states of alarm. 

She went to the door and opened it to find her young student, his eyes red from exhaustion. 

“Oh thank god,” he said. “You weren’t answering your phone, and I...well, I was afraid something…”

She held it up. “Ran out of battery. I just saw your calls. Come inside and I’ll make you some coffee.”

He sat down gratefully at her little kitchen table, and pulled out his tablet, setting it on the formica surface. “I’ve been going back through our specimen archive, and I found one that was incorrectly catalogued.” 

He turned it to show her, and she bent over it. “Fredrick Ian Keller, deceased 1832, hanged for the murder of a young woman, and I quote, by “accomplished means of bodily impalement with a sharp wooden object.”

“You mean he killed her after he was contaminated?”

“He’s a vampire,” Jack said, scrolling through the report. “He’s sentient, though very seriously degraded, but once we fed him he was able to communicate his experience to us. He told us that a young woman by the name of Katerina said him she would make him immortal, and in exchange…well.”

“You know what this means,” Zoe said as she passed him a mug, and held tight to her own.

“It’s proof that there were vampires in Britain before Dracula’s arrival,” Jack said. “But we suspected that.”

“Tell me what else you learned,” Zoe said, smiling behind her mug, enjoying vicariously his academic excitement. 

“She called him “her bride,” he said, his eyes bright and a little fevered. “The same word Dracula used. Keller also said that she, Katerina, was beautiful. She was whole, intact. And so he would have been, too, had he followed her instructions.”

He called up the video footage and pressed play. She watched as the wretched creature, head bowed, recounted the story. Even in her mind, she could see it playing out almost as clear as if the memory was her own. 

“She told me, after you have done this for me, to find a place that is cool and dry- a cellar or an ice lockup. To take laudanum in a large quantity, that I would sleep and wake then eternal. But I couldn’t stand it, mate. I did what she wanted and then I gave myself up. A noose was as good as poison, and a coffin much the same as any cellar. It weren’t, though.”

“You wish you’d listened to her,” Jack’s video self prompted. 

“Aye, mate,” Fred said with another sad, ruined smile. “She never wanted this for me. She weren’t a cruel one, you see. She said she knew the cruel ones, but she could never be like them, but she couldn’t stop the curse. It were like a disease, touching anyone it pleased. She could no longer live knowing that she had caused so much pain.”

“You loved her,” Jack said quietly. “On quite short acquaintance, Fred.”

“Most acquaintances are,” said the creature.

Jack stopped the video, and turned to Zoe. 

“I looked for references to a Katerina,” he said quickly. “Nothing extant, but that’s no surprise. What Fred gave me to understand is that she had lost the will to live over centuries, because all of her victims were, by her own moral preference, the abandoned or criminal fringe of society. And because she couldn’t risk them becoming contaminated or rising as revenants, she had to drain them to death, and stake the bodies.”

Zoe sipped her coffee, thoughtful. “She chose her victims according to a moral principle.”

Jack nodded. “The poor, the ostracized, the terminally ill. Criminals that were probably hardly a blip on the monitor by our standards. Don’t you see? She absorbed their sadness, and their despair.”

Zoe set her mug down, now feeling a little tightening in her chest. “And it killed her.”

“But she still wanted a legacy,” Jack said, tapping the tablet’s screen. “If Keller had followed her instructions, had ensured he was protected in a stable environment before his death, he would have risen without damage to his physical body.”

“You mean,” Zoe said, suddenly feeling her stomach drop. “That’s all it is. That’s all it takes to make a “perfect bride.”

“It’s a variable process,” Jack pointed out. “But in a perfect case, one where the victim is exposed to the pathogen, and that victim dies before the symptoms emerge, and before their body is exposed to decay or other forms of damage, they’ll rise stronger and saner than the lesser forms of undead. A true vampire.”

Zoe took the tablet from him, and began to scroll through the file, more for something to do than to confirm the theory. 

“Dracula’s bad at making others for the same reason he's so good at survival. He chooses his victims for their appeal as victims, not as companions,” Jack said as he gathered up their mugs and took them to the sink. “The making of a bride requires this “betrothal”, and he never had the patience for it. From Harker’s early account, all the attempts he’d made while in his aged state were too physically or mentally damaged to be viable.” 

“In fairness,” Zoe pointed out. “He wasn’t raised in a tradition of courtly love, either in Wallachia or in Turkey.”

Jack looked at her. “Are you defending him?”

“Objectively,” she said, not meeting his eyes. 

He returned to the table, but did not sit. “I’ve heard you speak objectively before on the importance of placing a subject in their own context. That sounds more like advocacy to me.”

Then she did meet his eyes. “It’s your area. Do you think it’s an invalid statement?”

“I think that he’s a dangerous killer,” Jack said, frowning. “I think he gets off on harm. I think he’s as vicious and focused as any serial murderer, and that remains true no matter how we might try to pathologize it.”

“You’re right,” she agreed. “He’s a vicious beast who deserves death a thousand times over.”

Jack watched her, looking like he wanted to speak, but not trusting himself. Then, he couldn’t stop.

“He will kill you, all of us, at the nearest opportunity.”

“He won’t harm me,” she insisted.

“You can’t know that.”

“I can,” she said gently. “I was dying, and now I’m not, and it’s my choice to risk my life however I see fit. What I expect you to do is keep your distance and allow me to choose how I conduct this investigation.”

He stared at her. “You can’t mean that. He’s not a medical study, Zoe. If you get too close to him…”

She pulled back her hair and showed him the place where he had bitten her the night before. “It’s too late, Jack. That ship sank on the way home.”

“Jesus Christ, Zoe,” he said, coming around the table to get a closer look. “When?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, letting her hair fall back to her shoulder. “What matters is that he’s decided to make me his project, and I’ve decided that as long as I can keep his interest on me, and away from the rest of you --”

“What if you get sick?” Jack demanded. 

“I’ve been sick,” she reminded him gently. “I’m not susceptible, or I would’ve contracted the illness long before now. I had terminal cancer, Jack. Now I don’t. I can’t ignore the potential Dracula represents.”

“What if he kills you?”

Zoe shrugged. “If I die, I die. It’ll be the last time.”

“I think you’re insane,” Jack informed her.

“But you trust me,” she pressed. 

He looked her in the eye. Then nodded, sniffing a little. She could see now what a terrible toll events had taken on him, and she felt sorry. She took his hands, and squeezed them gently.

“Promise me something,” he said, looking more earnest than ever.

“Name it,” Zoe said. 

“When we’ve learned all we can. We end him. For the world, and for us.”

“How will we know when that is?” she said gently. 

“You said it,” he said, the conviction in his voice growing stronger. “I trust you.”


	7. The Hunt

Vlad considered, as he let his mare nose through the forest undergrowth, that he owed Renfield a promotion. He hadn’t expected much on his return to Romania, but the firm had done very well by him and his property for the past hundred years, even to the point of maintaining the Drăculești’s ancient breeding stables, something he’d neglected to do after his death.

So much about his country had changed, but here in the dark woods of the Carpathian foothills, the smell of gasoline, of human sweat, of cocaine and asphalt had faded. Here, his homeland, the stones of his mountains, natural holdfasts, he felt young. Just himself, the white Carpathian mare under him, and of course, the wolves.

They remained at the margin, modest descendents of his old friends, and they liked the smell of horse. She pranced slightly sideways under him, steam issuing from her nostrils as she did so. She was a sturdy beast, with more draughthorse than pony in her, and Vlad had no doubt she could defend herself as well as any destrier if a wolf should happen too close. 

He laid a hand on her neck, using his knees to guide her, as often he had done with similar mounts back in his fighting days when he’d needed his hands free to wield a bow, sword or lance. He preferred to fight on his feet, but some battles needed the advantage of speedy hooves. 

Vlad urged the horse forward, and she found the trail easily. They had been well maintained, better than he’d left them, certainly, and it was possible for him to loosen the reins and gallop his mount along an open track. It was exhilarating, even now, hundreds of years later. It made him wish for an army, an enemy, the joy of an even contest. 

Well, he thought grimly. You have that, don’t you. She fights with weapons that are unseeable, impossible to detect, except through taste and touch.

It took another twenty minutes before he crested the ridge, and the old ruin came into view. He had inquired of what had happened to his old house, but he wasn’t entirely prepared for the scale of the destruction. A series of bombs had blown through the outer curtain wall, and one inside had destabilized the keep and caused it to slump forward into the bailey.

At this distance, he would be able to hear the scratchings, the whimperings, but there was nothing. Whoever had sent their airforce over the castle had done their work well - they’d penetrated the most fortified areas, obliterating its Nazi defenders, and presumably, his own little family of horrors several floors below. 

Well and good. He didn’t need them any longer. One gentle cluck to the horse, and she bore him to the gates. He dismounted and led her past the ruined gate, pausing only to gentle her, kiss her soft nose before instructing her silently to go and graze on the vegetation. To the wolves, he made it clear - this one was not for them.

His buckskin riding pants hissed as he walked, picking his way through the fallen piles of stone, the broken timbers. It was not an attractive ruin like Whitby Abbey, but looked more like what it was: a bomb crater. 

Still he was able to find the ingress to the lower levels. Through cobwebs, over the corpses of small animals, he moved through the serpentine corridors like the minotaur, only he was not stalking his own despairing shadow, but seeking it. And then - 

The tomb, lordly and nobly proportioned, dominated the chamber, no longer flush with the packed earth but raised above it.The crack in its face split through the legend “Dracula”, but it was otherwise intact. With no effort at all, Vlad pushed the sides apart, and lowered himself down into the box. It still contained a layer of his own burial soil. He’d been dead but conscious when she’d poured it over him. His physical body had ceased all further aging, all further decay, but the process as he knew now, had another twelve hours before it would complete itself.

He had screamed, but his throat and mouth would not work. Now, he lay quiet, trying to make himself dead, trying to let the scent of old ground sooth him, but it wasn’t working. He’d come all this way to find a moment of peace, and nothing. Just silence that was not silence at all, packed densely with the sounds of insects, the vocalization of wolves, and the distant clicking of hooves. 

Vlad reached out and touched both sides of his enclosing box, and closed his eyes, trying to work out the sudden alteration in this vampire dogma. Even Agatha had believed in it, enough to sacrifice herself on the premise that he would be restrained by it. But it hadn’t stopped him from rising from the primordial waters into this modern age. 

“Ah,” he sighed. Of course. Agatha believed it. Zoe thought it was pure nonsense, and that same skepticism was now in his blood. 

He closed his eyes again, trying to reach back, so many lives back, to the moment when he was made to understand, but it was a struggle. 

_But why must we sleep in our burial soil?_

_It is better._

_Why?_

_It is better, Ladislao. It will protect you. The air, the sun, these things cannot touch you in the ground. You must take it with you wherever you go so that you can protect yourself._

_“Valeria,” he murmured as though she was there beside him. “Why were you so very stupid.”_

_He’d wanted her, of course. A girl of sixteen, to his mind, ought not to loiter in the voivode’s drinking tent unless she was putting herself on offer. And for the voivode, all women were on offer. Something about her unsettled him. Her lost, lingering expression, her unbound hair. He wanted to touch her, to make sure she was really there. Then, she vanished._

_He had all but given up when she found him near the chapel. She, pale with her long black hair, seemed disinclined to linger, but he called before she could disappear again. She met his eyes, beckoned with one long finger, then ran, bare feet over the grass, along the right side of the stone chapel._

_Deciding he liked this game, Vlad shrugged off his leather surcoat and followed, chasing the white flash of her skirts, not troubling to notice she was leading him around the church widdershins into terrible bad luck. When he reached the rear, he thought he had completely lost her, and stood in annoyed perplexity. Then, all at once, she was in his arms, laughing._

_“Follow me,” she said, pulling on his hand like a little girl as she drew him inside. “I have a present for you, voivode.”_

_“Who are you?” he wondered out loud, letting her pull him along with surprising strength._

_This was not his castle, but one he had taken from a boyar who had been unwise enough to accept Hungarian bribes. He, Vlad, had no intention of remaining here long, and the boyar would no doubt return after the army moved on, though he could expect to find his wife, children and serfs waiting for him in the dry moat, a_ pădurea celor împărați _of special significance._

_“My name is Valeria,” she said. Then she stopped just long enough to pull him into a kiss._

_He wanted her, but there was something strange that was stopping him from moving in. Was it the feeling of sharpness in his lip as she kissed him? Was it her laughing smile, her playfulness?_

_“Look,” she said, holding out her arm. The room was a black void._

_“I see nothing, Valeria,” he said, now pawing at her, ready to play a different game._

_“Of course. Poor child, forgive me,” she clucked. He did not have time to express his confusion when, all at once, he was blinded by torch flares._

_He drew his dagger, ready to lash out, but the room was unoccupied by anyone but themselves. When his vision cleared, he looked down and saw, to his slow horror, a broad tall stone laid in among the flags, with the legend “DRACULA” inscribed on a raised edge._

_“I made it myself,” she said with a girlish pleasure. “Do you like it?”_

_He raised the dagger and aimed at her, aware that there was only one entrance to this room and it was behind him._

_“Who sent you?” he demanded. “Corvinus? The sultan?”_

_“No,” she said, stepping over the grave. “Though their agents are waiting outside for you. I did not like their talk.”_

_“Oh?” he prompted as he circled around the edge of the grave towards her. “What talk?”_

_“That they would kill you, and cut you into pieces,” her expression had turned into a pout. “Butcher you. I couldn’t have that.”_

_“Why not?” he demanded, more confused than ever. She glared at him, totally unafraid, her annoyance apparently on his behalf and nothing else._

_“Because,” she snarled, and then he saw her fangs. “You’re mine.”_

_She moved too fast for him to see, causing the torches to gutter. He did not have time to cry out_ vampir! _before her teeth were in his throat. His back impacted hard stone, and as he watched his own blood splash down on the face of the tomb, he realized that she had him pinned to the ceiling._

_When she kissed him, he tasted his own blood, salty human blood. When she cooed over him, called him her poor child, lost lamb, promised no one would ever harm her brave warrior prince, he thought he was going insane. This is how he ended? As a feast for a demon? And one who had been considerate enough to make him a tomb in advance?_

“Madness,” Vlad said to himself. Then he paused, took stock of the fact that he was the one lying in a box of dirt for no real reason. He stood, brushed himself off, and left the room.

When he made it to the surface, the light of day had already started to creep up over the jagged edges where walls had once been. He had no chance on of getting out on his own steam for at least ten hours, but it didn’t trouble him. He pulled out his mobile, and looked at his texts. 

No reply from Zoe, but he wasn’t surprised by that. He didn’t really need the phone to reach her. Even so, he raised it and snapped a photo of the gold edged trees, the electric green fields in the valley far below, still shrouded in blue mist. 

“One day,” he promised as he sent the message. “I’ll show it to you myself.”

Then, he found a sheltered nook, pulled on a pair of sunglasses and, like a night shift worker turning over on the tube home, fell asleep against the cool stone. 

When he woke, he was not alone. 


	8. Blood for Blood

“Come back to bed.”

Zoe smiled to herself, but did not return. She watched him from her perch against his sideboard, pleased herself with the view of his muscled body, his square jaw, his black eyes. He was unblemished, his skin dark, shaved head shiny in the half light. Arthur Holmwood had hardly aged a day since she’d last seen him, though his beard had acquired a few grey hairs here and there, and he had a few more further below his neck. 

“Zoe,” he said. “It’s cold. Don’t make me get up. I will make you the victim of my complaining until I am warm again.”

“It’s not that cold,” she said. “Want a cuppa?” 

“Does it come with a side of Zoe?” he wanted to know. 

“A small one,” she said. “I’ve got a seminar in the morning.”

He smiled at her, big grin, and she remembered why she’d taken to him so quickly. Arthur had retired from the army ten years ago, had been a staff linguist in many theatres of war, and now dedicated what he referred to as his “declining” years studying classics. 

They’d met in a symposium about the pre-Christian vampire, though he was there for mildly academic reasons, while she had pure research in mind. The event was a superficial part of their first cup of coffee, and disappeared from the conversation altogether when she discovered his deeper, more interesting reserves. He had also been one of the first casualties when she decided to distance herself after her fatal diagnosis. She’d taken refuge in her work, not in her friends, who stood in for the family she’d never had. But he’d been patient with her when she’d finally called to apologize.

“Zoe,” he called as she took her time putting on the kettle. “Your phone’s buzzing.”

“Who is it?” she called back, though a prickling sense on the back of her neck told her she knew. 

“Unknown. Should I answer and tell them to sod off?”

“Here,” she said, ducking around the corner, and holding open her hand. He tossed it at her and she snatched effortlessly out of the air. 

“Good catch,” Arthur said, genuinely impressed. 

“Zoe Van Helsing,” she said, turning her attention to the old electric kettle, which was taking its time.

“Is it dark where you are, Zoe?” breathed the familiar voice. It had been a few weeks since she’d heard anything from him.

“Yes, why do you ask?” she in a clipped, businesslike tone, for Arthur’s benefit.

“Ah, you have company. Am I spoiling your fun?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically. 

“Too bad,” he said, his tone now brusque. “I want you to come to me.”

“It’s rather an inconvenient moment,” she growled. 

“I don’t care. I’ll send you the flight times.”

“Vlad,” she hissed in an undertone. “I don’t even know where --”

“I want you to bring your equipment, and your team, and your annoying little friends along, too. I’ll have accommodations and facilities ready for you.”

“And why would I do such a thing?” she demanded. 

“Tell them you’ve been alerted to a valuable find, requisition whatever you need to make it look good. They trust you, don’t they?”

“But I don’t trust you.”

“Clever girl,” he purred. “I’ll see you soon.”

He ended the call before she could respond. She stared at the screen in bafflement, and was met with another text - flight times for the next week from London to Bucharest. 

“What are you up to?” she wondered. Then the kettle clicked. She went through the motions of making tea, but her actions were mechanical as her mind wandered the paths of this new terrain.

“So who’s Vlad?” Arthur wanted to know, accepting his mug with a good humoured grin.

“Budge up,” she told him, and slid into bed next to him, grateful for his warmth. 

“He’s an investor,” she lied, and found the lying easy. “One of the wealthier ones, and the more eccentric. He thinks he’s found something on the continent and he wants to bring us in for some kind of investigation.”

“Then why are you so ruffled?”

She took the mug out of his hand and sipped from it, thoughtfully. “It’s just that...I just came back, you know? I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I’m still learning how to live again, just the basics.”

“Calling me basic?” he murmured into her ear, one hand sliding under the covers. “Doctor, I must contest your diagnosis.”

“I’m not that kind of doctor,” she said with a smile. 

“You are a medical doctor.”

“Not that kind of medical doctor.”

“Good,” he said as he kissed her neck. “I don’t want to be cured.”

She kissed him, letting her hands move down over his firm, warm chest. He felt very warm to her, and she wondered if he was feverish. Perhaps she was getting sick. Annoying, but natural this time of year. 

They made love for another hour, pure good old fashioned human eroticism, awkward, wonderful, and ending with both of them panting and sticky. She’d forgotten how good he was.

“What is it?” he asked, sensing her rising anxiety. 

“It’s nothing.”

“You don’t have to go,” he pointed out. “Right? It’s not like he can kick you off the job.”

“No, I’m on the board,” she said.

“But you are going to go, aren’t you?”

She sighed. “It falls under the mandate.”

“And where?”

“Romania.”

“Jesus Christ.” He reached over and turned on the light, making her shield her eyes. “Romania. Just like that?”

“Arthur. I know it’s soon, but --”

He sat up, and wrapped his arms around his knees. “Zoe, you didn’t even tell me when you got sick. You just disappeared off the radar, a couple of months before we started seeing each other. Now you’re going to disappear again?”

“I’m sorry,” she said wretchedly, making herself look into his anxious face. “I know it’s sudden, but I have responsibilities.”

“You almost died,” he pointed out. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

“I have to go,” she said, catching sight of the clock. “Arthur, listen. I know it was hideously unfair of me...I know it’s not fair now.”

“I’ll come with you,” he said suddenly, watching her as she scrambled to ge dressed. “To Romania. I’ll be your badly kept secret, I’ll only come out after dark.”

“No,” she said sharply, then sighed. “No. It’s dangerous work. Dangerous and secret.”

“I’m your man for dangerous and secret, Zo,” he drawled. “I’ve got the resume.”

“I believe you,” she said, and kissed his forehead. “But I can’t take the risk.”

He pulled on his bathrobe and walked her to his door, pausing to put his hand on it to prevent her from opening it. “Just tell me this.”

“I’m going to be late,” she said with a pleading look. 

“Is that what made you sick in the first place?” he asked quietly. “The work?”

“No,” she said firmly. “That was cancer. That can happen to anyone.”

“But you’re a hematologist and a lot of other things besides,” he pointed out. “So when you say dangerous you mean on a molecular level.”

“On every level,” she said, blinking into the early morning light as he relented and opened the door for her. 

“Promise me you won’t disappear again,” he told her. “I know I’ve no right...we’ve barely struck up again, but...promise me anyway.”

She turned to him, palmed his dark cheek, and kissed him hard. “That promise enough?”

He nodded, solemn. She felt his sad gaze burning into her back all the way to her car. 

\--

When Zoe arrived at the Bucharest airport, Vlad was waiting for her, loitering by the arrivals’ gate wearing a leather racer jacket and a pair of dark sunglasses that made him fit right in with the youthful gangster aesthetic adopted by the shabby young men lounging in the seats, though at a much higher price point. 

When he wasn’t watching the gate, his eyes moved over the small assembly, passing over the young women, who concealed themselves under head scarves and stern expressions. but lingering on a young man who seemed so indolent as to nearly be asleep. Who were they waiting for, he wondered.

Vlad ran his tongue over his teeth as he considered the boy, then tore his attention away as the doors opened and disgorged a trickle of humanity. He saw Zoe at once, and she looked different to him. She still had a rangey grace, increased by her sensible riding boots. She’d treated herself to a good pair of jeans and clingy black t-shirt that flattered her slender body, also armored by a dark red suede bomber jacket. Her hair was thicker, fuller than before, and was pulled back into a loose bun. Her deep set blue eyes were lined with dark khol, giving her unblinking gaze a predatory, feline quality. She turned them on him and he felt a delicious little thrill go through him. 

She looked every day of her age and was not diminished for it. Perhaps not the most glamourous or voluptuous, but her beauty was particular to her. She knew she was a striking woman, a woman of power and consequence, and she carried herself in that knowledge. 

When she reached him, he took her hand and bent over it, pressing his lips to her sharp little knuckles the way he would for any noble lady. When he rose, he found her expression no more forgiving than it had been before, but a tiny hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. 

“Tell me why I’m here,” she said abruptly, almost an order. 

“Later,” he said, taking her hand. “We can talk about that later.” 

“My luggage -”

“Already handled,” he said with a grin, pulling her against his side, and bending to speak softly into her ear. “Everything’s taken care of. But right now, I want to take you to bed as soon as possible, which means you need to come with me.” 

She gave him one long haughty stare, then looked down at his proffered arm. Finally, she rolled her eyes and took it, allowing him to lead her out to the cab stand.

There, where the valet would normally have a car waiting, was a black Harley Davidson roadster, spit shined down to the inch, chrome gleaming where it picked up the light of other cars. Her mask of sternness broke and she let out a little laugh as she saw it. He enjoyed her appreciation as she smoothed a hand over the supple black leather seat. 

“Well?” he prompted. 

“Boys and their toys,” she said, shaking her head as he kicked the stand away, balanced the motorcycle and mounted it. 

“Hop on,” he said with a grin.

“No helmet?” she asked, eyebrows raised. 

“Zoe,” he chastised her. “You are not going to die in a car crash.”

“We’re not all immortal,” she reminded him as she straddled the rear seat, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“You are when you’re with me,” he told her. “Nothing will harm you.”

The bike rumbled as he started the ignition. In no time at all, they were ahead of traffic. Vlad navigated the Harley easily through the lanes, ignoring the tedious little human road rules. He could feel Zoe’s heart pounding against his back, and it seemed to resonate through him, as though it was his own heartbeat, resurrected by her exhilaration.

The Harley’s roar thundered off the tall, Brutalist apartment blocks, each of them more unsightly than the last, offset by the occasional shabby 18th century relic. It was not an attractive city, a casualty of the Soviet legacy. Still, the view improved as they moved into the city centre, closer to the government buildings and the university. 

They arrived, windswept, at the Epoque Hotel in less than fifteen minutes, and left the bike to the valet. Once in the elevator, Vlad scanned a key fob for the penthouse suite, and then turned his attention to Zoe. She was on him before he knew it, her greedy tongue in his mouth. 

Then, with equal speed, she slapped him across the face, hard enough to stagger a mortal man, but only just enough to make his head turn a fraction of an inch. Still, he was stung. 

“What was that for?”

“For being an arrogant bastard.”

“If that’s the case, I have bad news for you, darling.”

He reached for her, but the elevator door opened and she walked past him into the suite. It wasn’t the gauche masterpiece of his post-modern London abode, but it was well appointed, clean, and luxurious by the standards of the city. The sunken jacuzzi in the next room was an especially nice touch.   
  
She bypassed the table full of covered delicacies, and went straight for the champagne, which she uncorked without ceremony. She poured herself a sloppy glass of it, sucking the run off from the rim in a way that made his mouth water. Her eyes were resentful as she sat down on the couch, and glared at him.

“You really like him, don’t you,” he said softly, intending for it to sting.

“Yes,” she said, matter of factly. “I really do like him, and if you’ve dragged me out here just to try and --”

He held up a hand. “Zoe, I did not drag you out here just to interrupt your little affair.”

“Then why--”

“Tomorrow night,” he said. “I will show you, and you will understand why I asked you to call in your team. Now please, unless you plan on swearing me off entirely...”

“I couldn’t swear you off if I tried,” she muttered, and tossed back the rest of the champagne. 

“And the man you really do like…?”

She looked at her knees like a guilty little girl caught with her hand in the biscuit jar. He took her chin in his hand, lifted it so that she faced him. 

“He doesn’t know you like I know you,” he said as he kissed her mouth, then her cheekbone, then her ear. “He doesn’t know your blood.”

He bared his fangs, ready to pierce her flesh, taste her, but she pulled back from him, her eyes reproachful. Then, she stood back, and began to slide off her clothes. He sat back and watched as she peeled off the layers, shimmying out of her tight jeans, until she stood before him, naked but a scrap of black lace that hugged her thighs, barely concealing her.

 _Now_ , her eyes said. _Now, I grant you access. I give you permission._

“You can mark me,” she told him. “But not where others can see.”

“Anywhere?” he pressed, now licking his lips, unable to stop himself from salivating. 

In answer, she moved towards him, putting herself in his hands, shivering under the coolness of his touch. She stood over him, straddled him, gazed down at him with bedroom eyes. He tilted his head, pressing his mouth to her soft right breast. 

It was small but plump, the nipple hardening into a bullet as he tongued it. He was gentle as he slipped his fangs into the soft flesh around it, but she hissed in breath, tension running through her body. He sucked slowly, pulling her breast into his mouth, feeling her body begin to relax as the narcotic effect of his bite spread through her, made her pliant and willing.

She leaned into him, and he held her pressed against him as he fed, nursing greedily on her as her hands moved languidly over him, pulling open his wine coloured shirt, moving down to his black silk trousers to free his cock. 

As before, it was not long before he was sated. He wondered, in the back of his mind, why it was so. Her blood was gorgeous, almost too rich, and like anything rich, was more enjoyable in moderation. Then, he tore off her lace underwear and allowed her to drive the question from his mind as she lowered her hips, sinking his cock deep into her. 

“Zoe,” he breathed, then gasped as she tightened around him, her mouth curving into a distracted smile. 

He took hold of her hips, and she let herself arch back, no fear of falling as he held her in place, rolling his hips to deepen the penetration. When she was close, he reeled her back in, pulling her tight against him as he favoured short, hard strokes straight up into her. When she came, she did something that was completely beyond his experience. She pushed back his chin and sank her teeth into his neck, just below his jaw.

He came so hard it almost hurt. He could feel his eyes rolling back into his head, almost wishing his flesh would separate for her, this succubus who possessed the body of Zoe Van Helsing.

Then he couldn’t stand it. He pushed her away, sliced through his own flesh, opening his vein for her. Her tongue delved into the wound as she sipped, and then sucked hard, taking back what he’d drawn from her. 

“Fuck,” he gasped as he came again, so grateful to the English language for its cathartic vocabulary. “Fuck, fuck, fuck...oh, _you_ …”

She pulled back from him, just a trace of red at the corners of her mouth. He pulled her into a kiss, licking clean her lips, sharing in her intoxication. He rose with her still wrapped around him, and lifted her on to the bed, fucking two more orgasms into her exhausted body. 

He slid under the covers next to her, and she turned to tuck her head under his chin. He held her as the sun rose, trying to work out the mystery of her. She had changed, somehow. Or had she become more herself, this woman who brooked no trespass, and yet indulged him with no apology.

He bent down, inhaling the scent of her skin, and thought he detected the faintest change. She did not smell like death, but neither did she smell completely human. He was ready to ponder the matter, but was surprised by a feeling of growing fatigue. Before he was quite aware of it, sleep had taken him down into its deep, enfolding void. 


	9. The Ghost

  
They went by horseback up the steep track under the light of a nearly full moon. Zoe hadn’t ridden since she was a teenager, and it was a short phase. As a child, she was fascinated by snakes, spiders and bats, but horses frightened her. 

These horses were especially intimidating, a breed of Carpathian mixed with heavy, battle ready Belgian from the Dracula family’s own stable. They were bred for hardiness, and stability rather than speed. 

Vlad rode ahead of her on a white mare named _Gheţar_ with hooves like dinner plates, sitting easily. No surprise. As a noble from a warrior caste, he’d been born to the saddle. As they made their way further up the ridge along the narrow road, Zoe understood what he meant when he’d said this was the easiest way. The castle, shattered by war time shelling and bombs, hugged the spur of the mountain so precariously that it looked like it was about to fall off. 

Just looking at her made her feel a little dizzy, but the sturdy black beast under her had no such apprehension. Named _Cărbune_ , he was a steady mount, and the musty warm smell of him was comforting to her in the chill darkness. Vlad’s influence over the horses meant that she did not need to guide Cărbune, and they made it to the bailey without any trouble.

He had been silent for most of the ride, and she hadn’t tried to engage him. She watched as he dismounted. He stroked Gheţar’s snowy neck before releasing her, letting her wander off on her own. Then he helped Zoe dismount, lifting her by the waist as though she weighed less than air. 

“Vlad,” she said in an undertone, but he put one clawed finger to her lips, and smiled that maddening smile of his.

“Later,” he murmured, then offered his hand. She took it and allowed him to lead her into the ruins.

It was slow going - much of the structural integrity of the place had been compromised. As they descended down the passages, he often had to shift rubble out of their way, something that was still quite shocking to watch. He tossed aside a carved stone that must have weighed at least a ton as though it was nothing. Zoe shuddered to think of the destructive force he could unleash if ever decided to succumb to his worst nature.

The tomb was cool and dark. Zoe pulled a torch from her small backpack, and turned it on, letting the beam play over the space. The raised, cracked tomb drew her eye, and she went to it, putting her hand on the DRACULA legend carved into its head. She turned to look at Vlad, who quirked an eyebrow, and then directed his gaze to the corner of the room. 

Then Zoe heard it. A small sound, at first she thought it was just a whistle of wind through the cracks in the walls. But as she moved closer, she could hear it more clearly - a small, rhythmic whimpering sound, as though from a wounded animal.

Slowly, she moved the torch to illuminate the source of the whimpering. The beam picked up the feet first, ghastly pale and veined. As she directed it upwards, it revealed legs, folded in against a naked chest, thin arms wrapped around them, and finally, a bald head, face hidden in its knees. 

Blue eyes peeked over the bony knees. As she shined the light directly at them, she realized they had not noticed her because they were wide with terror, fixed on her companion. 

Vlad moved to her side. The creature jerked back as though startled, and clutched himself even tighter.

“Vlad,” she said softly. “Who is this?”

“This, my dear,” he said, taking two long strides, and then crouching down next to the terrified being and smiling broadly. “Is Jonathan Harker.”

\--

“I’ll need an extraction team with air support,” Zoe said into her mobile, looking out into the darkness. “And secure storage. Donors, too, as many as can be found.”

Vlad had secured a premises for the operation, an apartment block in Budapest that had once been a convent. It had underground parking access, which made it ideal for their purposes, and enough space to house a satellite operation. 

The extraction team that arrived by long-range chopper was made up of mostly locals, and one Harker Foundation field researcher that did not know Dracula by sight. William Kestler, one of Mina’s descendents, was an able bodied young man with a whiff of the adventurer about him. Together, he and Dracula wrestled Harker into the box. Weak and wasted though he was, Harker’s teeth were fully formed, sharp and dangerous, an indication that he was a full blooded vampire.

He went quiet as they locked down the latches. The extraction team, not having been permitted to see any of this, secured their unknown cargo with heavy duty webbing to the belly of the chopper. From there, it took them another three hours to arrive on the rooftop of an exceedingly superior hotel to the one in Bucharest.

Kestler conveyed the box to their temporary headquarters at Zoe’s instruction, leaving herself and Vlad to make their way down to a suite of rooms already waiting for them through the good offices of her Vlad’s Budapest agents.

Their suite’s floor to ceiling windows looked out on the Széchenyi Bridge, a gorgeous affair that spanned the Danube river between Buda and Pest, and reminded her slightly of the Brooklyn Bridge. As she gazed on it, she could feel Vlad’s hunger at the back of her neck, but the reaction he evoked from Harker, if he was indeed Jonathan Harker, had shaken her. There was something horribly familiar about that sad specimen, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was.

So she left Vlad to his own devices while she took a shower in the suite’s spacious bathroom. He had a supply of tailored suits in the closet, but her luggage was still en route. She wrapped a hotel bathrobe around herself, and found, when she wandered into the lounge, that Vlad had gone.

This confused her, because it was still hours before dawn, but then she spotted the flowers. A dozen red roses of perfect quality in a vase on the sideboard, and next to it a long, rectangular white box. Resting on it, a card inscribed in gold copperplate handwriting:

_I had this made for you. I hope you like it. Meet me on the 10th floor. Come hungry._

_D_

Zoe opened the box, and drew out a black floor length gown of the most supple fabric she had ever touched. She held it out, then lay it carefully over the back of the sofa. She didn’t know if she was charmed, or irritated by his romancing. She decided it was neither here nor there, and went back in the bathroom to do something about her hair.

\--

The hotel restaurant took up half a floor, and was encompassed with tall plate glass windows. Vlad had chosen a table in the corner, where the angle of the two high glass walls met. He’d selected this spot both for its excellent view of the restaurant’s sophisticated clientele, and because it afforded him the view of Zoe’s approach. 

She was resplendent in the gown he’d had made for her. It was on first glance black, but it shimmered a dark steel grey whenever she moved, and was deeply _décolleté_. She’d put her hair up in a clip, which flattered her long elegant neck, and she moved gracefully on a pair of high heels as she stalked lazily towards him. 

He rose, and this time he didn’t need to reach for her hand. She extended it with all the dignity of an empress, and he bent down to touch his lips to tender little vein that ran along the back of it. 

“Gorgeous,” he told her. 

She gave just the smallest roll of her eyes, but then she smiled at him, a wide genuine smile. She touched the lapel of his tuxedo, letting her fingers move over the waistcoat, testing the fineness of he fabric. It pleased him. He’d gone all out, wanting to wear his status and his power here in society, where it counted. 

He pulled out her chair. She ordered a rare steak and a bottle of wine. When they arrived, she set to with relish while he watched her. 

“You know,” she said as she watched him pour her another glass of wine. “You can’t avoid my questions forever.”

“I wasn’t aware I was avoiding anything,” he said. 

“Like hell,” she said playfully. “You think you can distract me with grand gestures.”

He let one perfectly shined shoe slide along her instep. “I know I can distract you, Zoe.”

She shifted in her chair in annoyance while he grinned at her.

“I mean it,” she said. “I want to know what you did to Jonathan Harker.”

His mood darkened at once, and he fought the desire to sulk. “Ask me something else.”

“Why?”

“It’s not pleasant dinner conversation.”

“I have Mina’s diaries,” she pointed out.

“Then you shouldn’t have any more questions,” Vlad muttered. 

“She was not able to write in detail about what happened at St. Mary’s,” she confided, slicing off a piece of steak, and soaking it in its own savoury blood before eating it. “I suspect it was too traumatizing for her.”

“Ask me something else,” he repeated, fascinated by the way she worked through the bloody piece of meat. 

She hesitated, so he refilled her wine glass, pushed it towards her and waited. Her steely blue eyes met his, and her focus was intense. 

“How did you become a vampire?”

Vlad pursed his lips, stretched slightly in his chair, and fixed his gaze on the glittering old city below them. 

“Her name was Valeria. I’ve known a couple of them, but none were quite as mad.”

“How so, mad?”

“She was, by her own account, a Roman slave girl during the Republic,” he began. “We didn’t have much to say to each other before she was killed.”

Zoe frowned, but she was clearly riveted. “There are vampires that old?”

He nodded. “She was contaminated sometime during Sparticus’ rebellion. She let me taste her blood, but her memories were somewhat abstract.”

“Because she was mad.”

Vlad sighed. “Naive. She was a farm slave, charged with the care of her master’s cattle and sheep. When the rebels came and ordered her to join them, it was natural that she should submit to them. She let the wolves kill her master’s flock, and neglected to protect the cattle from vampire bats. She called them “her friends.”

“So she learned to control them?” Zoe’s curiosity had turned her gaze into blue flame. 

“Vampire dogma,” Vlad said. “You said it before - often fuelled by self invention, until it becomes a fait accompli.”

“How did she die?” 

Vlad sat silent for a moment, and again he glanced out at the elegant Budapest skyline. 

“The first time,” Zoe amended gently. 

He did not meet her eyes, but continued to stare out, his eyes moving to the lit up church spire of St. Mattias. 

“Can’t you guess,” he said bitterly. 

He turned to her, could feel her horror as the realization took hold of her.

“They crucified her.”

“It took her three days to die,” he said. “Out in the open air, with the sun beating down on her. On the third night she transformed, and she had to take herself down off the cross. She went berserk, killed everyone on the farm where she’d been in bondage, then buried herself alive, and slept for the next fifteen centuries. She was sixteen when she died, and essentially remained so.”

“That’s why the native soil,” Zoe said. “And the cross. You inherited her fear. Her trauma.”

“The things I did as a mortal...crucifixion is humane by comparison. Yet, I see the cross, and I can feel her agony.”

Vlad placed his hands on the table, turning them so he could look at his own wrists. They were unblemished, but the phantom pain of the pitted nails being driven through them was acute. 

“What happened to her after she made you a vampire? You said that she was killed.”

“She buried me in the tomb you saw. I rose to find my army had moved on. The boyar I had taken the castle from returned with reinforcements. I don’t know how, but someone had managed to put a pike through her heart. Maybe that's what she wanted."

Reflexively, he put his own hand over his still heart, unaware that Zoe was watching him with compassion.

“They even left a note for me, carved into her naked flesh,” he recalled suddenly, not realizing he’d forgotten. “ _Aici a murit curva diavolului_.”

“Here died the devil’s whore,” Zoe murmured. 

Vlad frowned hard at her. “You don’t speak Romanian.’

She stared at him, and suddenly her elegance disintegrated. She looked down at her plate, slick with animal blood, then back at him, her eyes full of fear.

  
\--

At first, he was gentle with her, but it seemed she didn’t want gentle. She wanted to be broken. They made it a few steps into the suite before Vlad had her against the wall, her legs wrapped around him. They didn’t even bother to undress. 

He lifted her effortlessly, reached under her dress and tore her panties off, then buried his cock in her all the way to the hilt. She screamed, clinging to him as he fucked her in quick, deep strokes. Tears flooded down her cheeks, but she begged him not to stop, begged him not to hold back, even though he would kill her if he complied. 

  
Instead, he fucked her into exhaustion, then carried her into the bedroom, and peeled her out of her dress. When they were both safely under the covers, she asked him to put himself inside her again. He obeyed, thrusting languidly, coming inside her with a groan as both of them drifted off.


	10. The Second Highest Peak

When Zoe arrived at the foundation’s temporary headquarters that morning, she was pleased to find that the quarters they’d set up for Jonathan Harker were well appointed, but also perfectly exposed to the sunshine above by way of a glass atrium ceiling, which they had equipped with a remote controlled shade. 

Jack had flown in the previous evening and had left a report for her before taking a day to explore the city. Harker had been fed donor blood, according to the report, but had otherwise been unresponsive. Still, as she’d expected, he lifted his head from his contemplation of the old stone floor. 

“Agatha,” the creature murmured. “Sister Agatha.”

“No,” Zoe said as gently as she could. “She was my ancestor. Same family.”

He blinked at her. “Ancestor.”

She sighed. “You’ve been...not well. For a very long time.”

He frowned, his eyebrowless face looking almost comical, except for the horror in his blue eyes. “How long?”

She looked down at her feet. 

“How long, Agatha.” he demanded, and there was blood in his voice. 

“A hundred and twenty-three years,” she said. “We estimate that it took you nearly that long to regenerate after...whatever happened to you.”

His eyes wandered the cell, and it seemed to her he was avoiding the unspoken question. Then his eyes flicked back to her and he tilted his head. She felt her neck tingle, and realized he was looking at her scar.

He backed himself into the corner and crouched, eyes like frightened prey.

“Are you one of his?” he said in a tiny whisper. 

“No,” she said firmly. “And my name is Zoe.”

“Zoe,” he repeated, testing the unfamiliar sound. “I want to believe you, Zoe. But I’m not sure I should trust you. I am easily confused, and I think, quite vulnerable to deception.”

Zoe unbuttoned her sleeve, and rolled it up. “Well. There is one way for me to prove the truth of my words.”

His eyes lost some of their fear, now intent on the vein in the crook of her arm. She drew a packaged, spring-loaded lancet from her pocket, and showed him. 

“You really shouldn’t do that,” he said, eyes locked on the pulsing vein, his tongue licking his lips like a hungry animal. 

“I know exactly what I’m doing,” she said. “And I trust you.”

“Why?”

“Partly because I think you are a conscientious being with regard to my safety,” she said lightly. “But also because my associate can open that sky light you see up there, and flood this room with sunlight.”

He smiled. She knew then that she was safe. 

“Zoe,” he said, again testing the name. He moved closer, and like a supplicant, went down on his knees.

She applied the lancet to her arm, wincing only slightly as it bit into the vein. She offered it to him, and slowly, he bent his head lower, and then, sealed his mouth to the wound. In that instant, she saw what he saw.

_The shade of Sister Agatha, extolling her to do her duty and defeat Dracula. Jack, driving a stake into poor Lucy’s heart. Zoe, possessed by the benign spirit of Agatha, mocking Dracula, speaking truths and half truths, defeating him more with her spite than with her insights. The cancer, finally taking its due. Her attempt to stand, to be by his side with him in the light. His lightning fast movement as he caught her before she hit the ground, as he laid her on the table, as he sank his fangs into her throat and brought her into the dream. Then, fast forward into their contemporary exchanges. His fangs in her breast. The ecstasy of his dual penetration. Her mouth on his throat._

Harker released her arm, and backed away, his eyes full of blood, his fangs extended, snarling in a show of threatened violence.

“No more,” he hissed. “You are one of his. Don’t deny it. Don’t lie. He’s all over you. Inside of you. _You let him inside_.”

Zoe considered him with a frown as she put a sticking plaster over the tiny wound, held it so it wouldn’t bruise. When he curled up on himself and began to weep, she felt her heart breaking for him, felt a rush of shame and guilt. 

“I am no one’s,” she told him. “My relationship with Vlad Dracula is complicated, as is yours.”

“Complicated,” he spat. “I was his toy. His tool. His…”

“Bride?” she suggested. He turned his face away.

“Jonathan,” she whispered, crouching down to be close to him. “What did he do to you?”

“You mean you really don’t know?”

“Agatha’s spirit didn’t confide everything to me,” she admitted. “And what I experienced of her legacy was from Dracula’s veins.”

“How is that possible?” he wondered. “That you, a mortal woman, can divine these histories from consuming vampire blood?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m trying to understand. I shouldn’t even be alive, Mr. Harker.”

“If it’s true,” he said, extending his own wrist now. “Then perhaps you can read my history from my blood.”

She stared at his wrist as he pressed the tip of his nail into the vein, holding it there so the blood welled up around it. She hesitated. 

“You want to know the truth about him?” Harker pressed. “You want to know how your lover betrothed me?”

His blood was salty sweet, more viscous than human blood due to its concentration. As she lapped at it, she experienced a horrible sensation. Pain in every part of her body. Pain as though steel rods were being inserted into her limbs, as though a thick, sharp object was pushing itself up through her gut, through her throat, out of her mouth. 

_Your eyes aren’t blue any more._

_I let him inside._

_Then, the feeling of being peeled, flayed, his skin on fire, his consciousness floating through his blood stream, the only structure remaining to his immortal ruin. Then darkness. Then the sleeping face, the ruby red eyes opening. The sound of his own screaming in his ears as he fled back to the tomb, praying for nightmares to cloud out the reality._

Zoe dropped his wrist, and backed away. She could feel Dracula’s influence crawling under her skin like an infestation of biting insects. She looked into Harker’s beseeching, tearstained face. 

“Do you understand now?”

\--

Zoe left Harker there to be fed by her small army of donors, and walked out to the river’s edge. She spent a long moment of silence, waiting for the feeling to subside, but it refused to, not after an hour, nor two. It wouldn’t ever, she suspected.

As the sun set, her mobile phone vibrated in her pocket. With shaking, pale hands, she lifted it. Looked at the message.

 _Thinking of you._

She screamed, feeling it tear from her throat like all the anguish she had ever seen or experienced was trying to escape her. She threw the phone as hard as she could into the great, seething Danube. Before it touched the surface, she sank to her knees. By the time it disappeared, she was already unconscious, as white as a sheet, her breath slowing to a shallow panting.

That was how the policeman found her, sprawled out on the embarkment. It took another twenty minutes for the ambulance to arrive. By the time Jack received the phone call, she was admitted to the ICU. She was alone in her room when she stopped breathing on her own. 


	11. Arthur Holmwood

“Tell me more about your donor program,” Arthur said into the phone as he juggled it along with a carry on, and his coat. “Where is the intake office? Fine, yes, I’ll check on the website. Yes, I was referred by Dr. Van Helsing, I understand she’s in charge. Yes, thank you.”

He hung up as they called his boarding group. He’d expected it to be difficult, but the Harker Foundation had saved much of the work for him by putting out advertising for healthy blood donors on the continent. They offered room and board for anyone interested, but that wasn’t really why Arthur was interested. He just wanted to get in the front door.

The flight to Budapest was direct, and long. He had plenty of time, as he watched the clouds pass, to contemplate the mystery of Zoe. He thought of her body, her long lines. Her laughter in the dark. Then a phone call, and it was like a shadow had fallen on her. An investor, she claimed, but Arthur was the veteran of two divorces and he knew what that kind of lie sounded like. 

He’d known a few Vladimirs in Chechnya, back in the days when his “secret work” brought him into contact with their militias, but he’d never met a Vlad before. When he’d gone sniffing around for their investor information, the Harker Foundation told him the information was a matter of record with Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue Service, and, in so many words, to sod off if he knew what was good for him.

The Hungarian donor study was far more accommodating. He gave them a fake name, then bought his own ticket rather than redeem the one provided for him. 

They arrived an hour late, so it was dark by the time Arthur made it to the hotel. He’d never been to Budapest, and his appointment wasn’t until half past eight, so he decided to do some exploring. The soldier in him liked to know the layout of any unfamiliar region, and the city was lovelier than he’d expected. He would have enjoyed reconnoitring with Zoe at his side, but he didn’t even know if she was in the country. 

He remarked to the woman at the desk that it was an interesting hour for an intake appointment. She gave him a tight smile, and directed him to a small exam room, where he submitted to a blood draw for “testing” purposes. 

“I was hoping to speak with Dr. Van Helsing,” he said to the petite woman who walked in. 

She smiled. “She’s not available at the moment. I’m Dr. Bloxham. Have you filled out the waiver?”

He nodded, and handed Bloxham the form. Then, as she turned, he raised his pistol, and flipped off the safety, aiming it squarely at her forehead.

“So sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “When I said I was hoping to speak to Dr. Van Helsing, I wasn’t really looking for excuses.”

Bloxham’s attitude chilled at once. She didn’t seem to be afraid of him, and he admired her for it. He had no intention of shooting her, but he did want answers. 

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said.

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Bloxham said, eyebrow arched. 

“Listen,” he said. “Zoe is a friend. A very close friend. She’s gone missing, and there is a person of interest who, I believe, has something to do with it.”

“Zoe’s not missing,” Bloxham scoffed. “She was here this morning.”

“Then why didn’t she keep this appointment?”

“I don’t know,” Bloxham said. “Perhaps she didn’t want a pistol in her face.”

Arthur was just on the point of lowering it when Bloxham reached under the desk. An alarm began to sound, and steel shutters came down over the small window behind him. Bloxham looked at him with a defiant expression, waiting for him to react. 

“Who do you work for?” Arthur demanded.

“The greater good,” she replied. 

The mercenary that arrived at the door was burly, but had a whiff of the thug about him. His pistol was a .50 calibre Desert Eagle, engraved with Cyrillic. 

“Lower your weapon,” he said, and Arthur noted his accent. 

“I don’t think so,” Arthur said, only he said it in Russian. “I’m not here to harm anyone. I’m just looking for answers. And my girlfriend.”

Bloxham shot a glance at him, and it was clear she could not understand Russian. 

“Your girlfriend?” the mercenary said, only he said it in English for the doctor’s benefit.

She turned to look at him, stunned. “You’re Arthur Holmwood?”

“Most days,” he said calmly, his hand steady as he kept the pistol trained on her.

“Maybe they fed her to the vampire,” the mercenary said, speaking now in Russian. 

“Vampire?” he looked again at Bloxham. “What the hell is he talking about?”

She arched a brow, looked back and forth between the two men. “Zoe is currently working in our laboratory. She’s doing top secret research, and therefore has limited contact with the outside world.”

“I just want to know that she’s all right,” Arthur said. 

“All right,” Bloxham said. “If you follow me, I’ll take you to her. But afterwards, don’t blame me if you’ve been chucked. She won’t thank you for this.” 

“What about him?” Arthur said, nodded to the goon. 

“You can go,” she told him.

“Are you certain?” he said, looking back and forth.

She nodded. “Please go to the foyer. If he comes back without me, shoot him.”

Reluctantly, the man stepped away.

Arthur kept the pistol raised as he followed Bloxham down a narrow corridor. The place, he’d discovered in his research, had once been a convent called St. Mary’s, and the floor was laid out with heavy flagstones. 

As she keyed into a heavy security door, Arthur noticed the odd countdown clock next to it - time until sunrise. Nine hours and thirty two minutes. 

“What’s that about?” he asked.

“You’ll see,” she promised.

Inside, a strange room with glass walls, a bed, a screen and a table, and a very pale man with a very short growth of hair sat with his hands folded over his knees, looking up into a skylight full of stars. 

“Good evening.” Bloxham called politely. “We’re looking for Dr. Van Helsing. My understanding is that she came here to speak with you.”

He looked up, and there was a haunted look in his face. Ignoring Bloxham, Arthur moved towards the glass. The man mirrored him, his eyes curious as he approached, as though Arthur was something totally novel. 

“Are you Vlad?” Arthur demanded, losing patience. 

“No,” the man said, and there was a slight curl to his lip. He looked down at the gun. “What is that?”

“Do you know him? Who he is? How I might find him?”

The man’s eyes - blue eyes, but inflamed with red, flicked over behind Arthur. Arthur turned to see Bloxham at a control console, her finger on a red button. The door to the glassed in chamber slid open. Before Arthur even thought to raise it, the gun was out of his hand, and in the hand of the pale man.

“This is Jonathan Harker,” Bloxham said politely. 

Harker looked at the gun, turning it around and examining it. “It looks different than a revolver.”

“It works the same way,” Bloxham said softly.

Harker gave a faint smile, took the pistol in both hands, and bent it as though it was nothing more than tin foil. “Not any more."

He offered the gun back to Arthur. When he didn’t take it, he tossed it on the floor. 

Arthur stared. “What are you?”

“He’s a vampire,” Bloxham said calmly. “We’re helping him to recover from terrible trauma.”

Arthur looked over at Harker. He put his hand over his mouth as the realization hit him. 

“How old are you?” he wanted to know.

“That’s an odd question, Mr….”

“Holmwood. Arthur.”

“Holmwood,” Harker repeated. “I knew a Holmwood. Though he wasn’t a black chap.”

“But how long ago?” Arthur pressed. “AD or BC?”

“Late 19th century, I’m afraid.” Harker laughed softly. “You seem disappointed, Mr. Holmwood.”

“It’s how Zoe and I met,” Arthur insisted, suddenly more concerned about being understood than before. “At a symposium about pre-Christian vampire legends. Please tell me where she is. I’m afraid for her.”

“I don’t know if I believe you,” Harker said. “You did menace Dr. Bloxham with a firearm.”

“Well, I don’t have one now,” Arthur said, exasperated. Then, he gasped as Harker’s hand shot out and caught him by the throat, lifting him on to his toes. 

“No,” he agreed. “You don’t. And you said a name that I don’t like.”

“Jonathan,” Bloxham said, now a note of urgency in her voice. “I don’t think he’s lying.”

“His blood won’t lie,” Harker said, and now Arthur struggled. Because now he saw the eyes darken red. Now he saw the fangs. 

Bloxham approached carefully. “You’ll kill him. You’re not strong enough to stop.”

Harker drew back his lip to show his teeth in a snarl. Then, he dropped Arthur, made his way back to the door of the cell, and walked inside. Bloxham pressed the button and resealed the chamber. 

Then she approached Arthur, who took a wary step back, massaging his crushed throat. She held up a large elastic arm band, and a needle.

“You’ve already signed the papers, Mr. Holmwood.” 

He hesitated. “How will it help Zoe?”

“Give me your arm.”

Reluctantly, he obeyed. She drew his blood with a steady hand, filling only a single vial. Then, using a kind of rotating tray, she transferred it inside to Jonathan Harker. With a shaking hand, the vampire uncapped the vial. Arthur watched as he tossed his head back, drinking it in one gulp, his tongue reaching to catch the traces.

He licked his lips, his eyes rolling back slightly. Then, his gaze fixed on Arthur. He walked all the way up to the glass, and put his hands on it, pressing his face against it and grinning his fanged grin as he stared through it at Arthur. Saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth.

“Yes. You are a Holmwood. I knew your great great grandfather,” he said, his tone of wonder not matching the animalistic hunger in his eyes as he stared out. “His son married the daughter of a former slave from Jamaica, in secret. They eloped, and had a son. Your grandfather, Elias Holmwood.”

Arthur, somehow unable to help himself, also moved forward. As he watched the vampire, he could have sworn that the fuzz on his scalp had grown, and his sunken face had regained some flesh. 

“Tell me more,” he said, utterly fascinated.

“You speak Russian, Swahili, French and Armenian. You have a daughter, but her mother took her to America when you divorced, and often you weep because you miss her so much.” 

“More,” Arthur said, feeling his heart rate increasing.

“You love Zoe Van Helsing,” Harker said, and as he did, something human seemed to return to his face. He took a step back. “And you are right to be afraid.”

Bloxham looked to Harker. “Can we trust him?”

Suddenly, Harker lifted his head, his eyes going wide. A faint breeze seemed to touch the back of his neck, but it was Harker he was focused on. The man’s terror was evident, but Arthur couldn’t understand why. 

“Hello, Johnny,” came a dark, English accented voice that was somehow not English at all. 

Arthur whipped around in time to see a man, tall and well dressed in an expensive dark suit, with perfectly coiffed black hair and strong slavic features sketched in an expression of amusement. 

Bloxham moved, but not quickly enough. The man - the vampire, for he must have also been one - was too fast for her. He snapped the red button off the console, showed it to her, and tossed it over his shoulder.

He turned back to Bloxham. “Where is Zoe?”

Bloxham stared at him with dark loathing in her eyes. "The guards? The receptionist?"

The vampire smiled at her, making a slurping noise. "They're resting. I did have a bite or two. Or three."

Arthur watched as Bloxham curled her fingers over her right hand where, he’d somehow failed to notice, she was missing her thumb. 

“What about you, Johnny?” the vampire said as he turned to look at Harker, but Harker was too paralyzed with fright to respond. 

He turned to Arthur. “What about you? I don’t think I know you.”

Arthur remained silent, but inside he could feel himself shaking with fear and rage. 

“You’re very fit,” the vampire said, tilting his head to look him over. “But your heart is beating very fast. You should be careful.”

“She’s not here,” Bloxham said suddenly, her face red with hate. “Who invited you in, anyway?”

The vampire raised a hand as though performing a stage introduction. “Johnny did. A hundred and twenty-three years ago, this was the convent of St. Mary’s. This is where I killed him the second time.”

Harker sank to the floor and turned his face away, curling in on himself.

“Get out,” Bloxham snapped. 

“She’s not responding to my texts,” the vampire said with a bit of a pout as he pulled out a mobile phone to show her. 

“You’re Vlad,” Arthur said suddenly. “She said you were some kind of investor in the Harker Foundation.”

The vampire, Vlad, turned to him and grinned the most terrifying grin Arthur had ever seen, even more so than Harker's. His mouth was full of the same fanged teeth, wicked sharp, and, now that he looked closer, stained pink with blood. 

“I am Vlad, third of that name, of house Dracula,” he said, giving a courtly little bow. “And must be Arthur. Zoe’s little _aperitif_.” 

Arthur, feeling the rage now stiffening through him, took a step forward. 

Bloxham came to him, put a hand on his shoulder. “Arthur, don’t. You can't win against him.”

Vlad Dracula smiled. Then, before either of them could move, he was on the other side of the room, Bloxham’s phone in his hand. He held it up, perused it. 

“She hasn’t responded to you, either,” he said as his used one taloned finger to scroll through. “Have you tried calling?”

Bloxham just stared in stony silence. Arthur reached down to take her hand, and gave it a squeeze. 

Suddenly, the phone buzzed. Vlad looked at it, then hissed in annoyed. He held it up to show them the caller: Jack Seward. 

Vlad held it out to Bloxham. “Answer it.”

She said nothing, only glared. 

“Dr. Bloxham,” he said, adopting a disappointed tone, then turning his eyes to Arthur. “Please answer the call, or I will twist his head off, and make you watch while I drink his spinal fluid.”

Bloxham turned to look at Harker, who was now watching her, his eyes wide with fear for her. Then she met Dracula’s eyes. She took the phone, and answered it.

“Jack. It’s a really bad time.”

Dracula gave her a warning show of his fangs, but she ignored him. Arthur could hear the worried young Englishman’s voice from the short distance. It sounded tearful.

“It’s Zoe. St. James’ Hospital just called me. Come as soon as you can."


	12. Suffer Unto Me

Jack was waiting at the front desk, trying to navigate the language barrier in order to find out where Zoe had been taken, when suddenly Dracula came up from behind him and snatched him by the arm, dragging him along like a naughty school boy. 

“Come with me.”

“Let go of me, you bastard,” Jack hissed as he was pulled down a flight of stairs. “She’s in intensive care. I’m just trying to find out --”

“No, she isn’t.”  
  
Dracula released him as they got to a heavy door. Above it, the word _Hullaház_ was emblazoned. 

“What does _Hullaház_ mean?” Jack wanted to know, but the sinking feeling in his stomach warned him that he knew the answer.

Dracula withdrew a keycard he’d evidently stolen, and opened the door. It was cool inside, and the lights were low. As they moved into the space, Jack realized where they were. The white porcelain tables, the wall of boxy refrigerator doors. Tile on the floor, coiled hoses. All of it in varying states of shabbiness. At the far end of the space, a large cargo elevator was just descending. 

Dracula strode purposefully towards it. There were two attendants, large men in dirty scrubs flanking a gurney on which lay a slender woman in white silhouette under a sheet. 

The men looked up, and one of them must have said something about the area being restricted. Dracula did not break stride as he applied a firm punch to one, then the other, dropping them on the floor with no trouble at all. He pulled the sheet away, revealing Zoe Van Helsing, wearing cheap paper scrubs. Jack moved forward, feeling his throat closing. She looked so dead. She looked deader than anyone he’d ever seen. Her skin was pale, sunken. Her lips white. 

She was limp dead weight as Dracula lifted her into his arms, his expression so focused on her that Jack nearly forgot to be afraid of him. 

“Come along,” Dracula said as he stepped into the elevator, eyes still on Zoe. 

Not knowing what else to do, Jack followed. 

\--

A supercharged Jaguar waited for them outside. Dracula loaded Zoe’s body into the back seat. He glanced at the sky as Jack got in next to him. 

“What are you doing?” Jack asked, overwhelmed by the bizarreness of riding shotgun next to the five hundred year old monster.

“You know what I’m doing, Dr. Seward," Dracula said as he punched through traffic lights. "You’ve made me your life’s work.”

Jack looked at the body in the back seat. “You were her life’s work, not mine.”

“Quite right.” Again, Dracula was so intent that he did not bother looking at him.

It took them less than ten minutes to reach the hotel. The elevator took them to the top floor. When they reached the suite, Jack shut the door behind them, and watched as Dracula laid Zoe down on the king sized bed, then slid in beside her, putting his arm around her shoulders. 

“She’s...dead,” Jack said uselessly. 

Dracula finally met his eyes. “You know, my young friend. I misjudged you on our first meeting.”

“How so?” Jack said bitterly, sitting down on the couch, staring at his dead mentor and feeling as though this was the more profane wake he’d ever attended.

“Remember that I’ve tasted your blood,” Dracula continued. “Filtered through her, of course. Let’s say I am sensible to your theories, and I believe you’re correct. Except for one thing.”

“What is that?” Jack whispered, his eyes suddenly blurred with tears. 

“I do have patience,” Dracula said reproachfully. “I have just so rarely encountered anyone worth being patient for.”

Suddenly, Zoe corpse gasped, making Jack jump in his chair. He rose and went straight to the bed, but Dracula held out a clawed hand. When Zoe’s eyes opened, they were milky white, unperceptive and dull. But as her wasted body began to animate itself, Jack could see her sniffing blindly, and there, when she inhaled the flavour of the air through her mouth, he saw the points of delicate, but fully formed fangs.

“No,” Jack whispered. “Zoe.”

“You want to help her?” Dracula asked, more deadly serious than Jack had yet seen him. “John Seward, I know you love her.”

“She doesn’t want this,” Jack insisted. 

“If that is true,” Dracula said. “Then you owe her the opportunity to make that choice.”

“And if she chooses to die?” Jack demanded. “Will you stand aside? Would you do it?”

Dracula smiled now, and his human teeth gleamed in the dim light. “What do you think?”

Jack stared at him. Then, slowly, he began to roll back his sleeve. He went back to his coat and drew out his pen knife. Then he kicked off his shoes and climbed up on the other side of the bed until he was close enough to perform the task.

He looked up to Dracula. “Can I trust you? Can you control yourself?”

Dracula nodded. Then he pulled Zoe back against his chest, surrounding her shoulders with his arm. His other arm came around her, and he held her chin gently, but firmly in place. 

“Do it now,” he ordered. 

Jack gritted his teeth, inserted the tip of the blade into his wrist and nicked the vein. Copious blood began to flow from it, and he held the wound over Zoe’s mouth. Her jaw worked as the blood dripped into her fanged maw. As he watched, colour seemed to return to her. Her white gums began to darken, and flesh returned to her cheeks. 

Jack lowered his wrist down so that it touched her lips, and he sighed as she began to suck on the wound. She did not bite down, but her tongue lapped at the wound. When Jack looked up, he saw Dracula watching him, his irises ringed in red, his prodigious predator's teeth just visible under his lip. 

Then Zoe made a small sound, and as Jack watched, the white film disappeared from her eyes. They were again the steely blue, containing the iron forged soul he knew so well.

“That’s enough,” Dracula told him. “No more.”

Jack had to think for a moment about his words before he pulled away. He felt dizzy, but he also felt slightly intoxicated. Zoe struggled vaguely against Dracula’s gentle but unmovable grip as she arched up, trying to reach the flow of Jack’s blood as he pulled away. 

As he went to retrieve the first aid kit from under the bathroom sink, Jack felt his high suddenly punctured by the sound of Zoe’s sobbing scream. It tore through his heart and he was glad he hadn’t seen it. He bandaged his wrist, and edged out far enough to witness the scene. 

Zoe was weeping, her fists clenched in Dracula’s shirt front, trying to apply some kind of violence to him, but she was too weak from grief, and she could only sob the word _no_ over and over again. 

“Welcome to the devil's comedy, my poor love.” Dracula said with a sad smile.

“But I was alive,” she whimpered in a voice that was so girlish it seemed impossible that it could come from a grown woman. “I was _saved_.”

“Saved,” he repeated. “Perhaps. Just not the way you expected.”

“This isn’t happening,” she whimpered, and clutched him tighter.

“This has already happened, Zoe,” Dracula murmured, pressing a kiss to her pale forehead. “You died in my arms. I intended to die in yours. We were both cheated.”

“But...I’m human,” she insisted, raising her head, fighting to regain her argument. “Daylight. Human food. Human processes, human heartbeat. How…”

“The mind is a powerful thing,” he told her. “You were animated by your belief in your own survival, your own miraculous recovery. The disabilities I inherited from Valeria never touched you because you are a 21st century woman of science, and they don’t have power over you. But it was never going to last. You know that you can’t outpace biology.”

She turned, looked at Jack, eyes pleading. “Jack.”

He drifted out into the room, feeling distinctly apart from the scene, but unable to resist his friend’s despair.

“I was wrong about the cancer,” he said. “I was wrong about so much. It's your spirit. It’s so strong that it slowed the process and allowed you to believe that you were still...alive.”

“But you’re saying my belief in my own mortality was enough,” she cried in despair. “Why can’t I just…”

But it was useless. She could not deny knowledge once it was known. She was categorically incapable of unlearning a fact. They all knew it. 

“For what it’s worth,” Dracula said as he bent his mouth to her ear. “I’m sorry.”

Then he lifted his head from her, and met Jack’s eyes. He felt his words resonate inside his head, measured and calm, but nonetheless, a promise.

_Leave me with my bride. If you tell them where we are, I will devastate your house. I will make a forest of the impaled bodies of your loved ones. I will feed their hearts to her from the palm of my hand._

Jack picked up his shoes, and his jacket. He cast one look behind him. Zoe seemed to calm as Dracula kissed her tears away, gentling and nuzzling her. Whatever else he was, Jack decided, he loved her. 

It was enough. He left. 

\--

“Don’t leave me,” Zoe said as she curled her fingers in Vlad's shirt front. He was glad to hear the note of desperation in her voice was starting to fade.

“I never left you,” he told her. “Not you. I don’t think I could. You’d follow me from soul to soul.”

He kissed her, then gently used his thumb to lift her upper lip. Her fangs were small, but well formed, and needle sharp. A perfect match to her delicate mouth and the fine bones of her jaw. 

“Lovely,” he whispered. 

Before he could stop himself, he slid his tongue into her mouth, catching one razor tip. She sealed her mouth against his, drawing on his tongue, savouring the little trace of blood that issued from it before it healed. 

Now determined to restore her, he lifted her from the bed, and carried her into the en suite bathroom. He went to the deep spa-style jacuzzi and turned the hot water. Her unblinking eyes watched as he stripped off his rumpled suit, tossing it aside. Then he reached for her, pulling apart the flimsy scrubs, letting them fall from her long, gorgeous body. 

She slid her arm around his neck as he lifted her again, then walked down the jacuzzi steps with her in his arms, as though she was being brought to the river Jordan for baptism. The thought made him smile, and she must have sensed it, because the dreamy expression that had overtaken her was interrupted a small twitch at the corner of her mouth. It pleased him that she hadn't lost her sense of humour. Agatha had always made him laugh, especially when she was trying to kill him. 

Once in the water, she seemed to finally let go of the anguish. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him deeply, her slender form so perfectly fitted to his hands. 

“Can we?” she whispered. He wasn’t sure what she wanted, until she laid her hands on his chest. “Now that…”

“Vampires don’t, normally,” he told her. “Or at least, I haven’t with another.”

She frowned. “None at all? Not with any of the ones you’ve made?”

He shook his head. 

“Why not?”

“Because,” he sighed. “All the vampires I've ever made have been first drafts, and I didn't love any of them. Platonic sex lacks the surrender, don’t you agree?”

"What about Harker?"

He reached under the water, sliding his hand between her thighs. "Let's not talk about that now."

Her accusatory expression vanished as his hand made contact with her. She was already wet for him by the time he brushed his fingers against folds. She was perfectly engorged, her clit swollen against his knuckle, and as he applied pressure, she made that noise that he loved, that deep little groan of surprise followed by a gasp. He captured her mouth with his, and drank the sound from its source.

She straddled him, sank down on to his erect cock, taking every bit as much pleasure in it, only now her eyes were flushed red, and her fangs were beautiful, glistening in the dim light as she gasped again. He balanced her hips so that she could arch back, water swirling around them as she undulated her hips, grinding her pubic bone against him. Her eyes bore down into him.

_I want to taste you._

Vlad tilted his head back, inviting her, wanting her to do it. He groaned as her fangs sank through his immortal flesh, finding the carotid artery, pulling the blood to the surface. She shuddered in his arms as she drank him, coming in a rush, the way he had come when he’d last tasted her. She squeezed him hard enough to make him wince. He gasped, then laughed in sheer pleasure. 

He cradled her head to his neck, his own teeth finding her flesh, breaking it, spilling the flavour of the young doctor on to his tongue. What a darling he was. And in his undead heart of hearts, Vlad was pleased that he’d been Zoe’s first real feast. An offering of compassion, instead of a frightened victim.

They released each other in that same moment, now measure for measure. He lifted her out of the water. She pulled him down on top of her. They fucked like mortals on the wet tile, free of monstrous aspect, in a cloud of uncomplicated lust. Her nails bit into his back as she came again, her internal muscles again closing on him like a vice, pulling the orgasm out of him, tearing a very human cry of ecstasy from his throat.

He did not need to tell her that he loved her, and neither did she need to tell him that he was an irredeemable monster. Nor did he have to insist that there was nothing incompatible about any of that. Their blood was testimony. He was grateful that she wanted to go on at all, that her incomparable curiosity was more powerful than her moral inhibitions. She had more lives to live.

“You’re going to fight me, aren’t you,” he said as he lay back, her head resting on his shoulder. 

“Of course,” she said. “I’m not like you.”

“Good,” Vlad Dracula said. “There’s only room in this world for one of me.”

She sighed. Then she rolled away from him. He amused himself by stroking her finely formed vertebra. Then he kissed the back of her neck, nuzzling her wet hair. Then he realized - she was asleep. There were at least four more hours of darkness, but she was asleep. He wondered if this meant that she could continue to walk in the daylight. It occurred to him that having a bride capable of that could be a tremendous advantage, or a tremendous disadvantage, especially if she was really annoyed with him. 

She’d confront him about Harker, soon. He tasted that on her blood too, and she must have tasted it in his that skinwalking was hardly the worst of his sins. He supposed, as he lifted her limp form and bore her back to the bed, he’d have to make it up to both of them somehow. But not tonight.

They had time. 


End file.
